PREFACE

THE
difficulty of writing about al-Ghazali is well illustrated by the various
comments and criticisms that have been made of the works by Julius Obermann, A. J. Wensinck, Margaret Smith and Farid Jabre. The difficulty is due to the
great volume of his writings, to the fact that books were ascribed to him that
were definitely not by him, and to the changes in his outlook which occurred
during the course of his life. When the growth and development of his outlook
is combined with the lack of complete agreement about which works are
unauthentic, scholars are presented with some peculiarly intractable problems
before they can properly begin the study of al-Ghazali’s thought. Yet the
subject is one that is well worth attempting. Al-Ghazali has been acclaimed as
the greatest Muslim after Muhammad, and is certainly one of the greatest. His
outlook, too, is closer than that of many Muslims to the outlook of modern
Europe and America, so that he is more easily comprehensible to us. Thus there
is here a great challenge to scholarship.

The present study of the struggle
and achievement of al-Ghazali does not attempt to take up that challenge in its
entirety, but only to look at his life and thought as a whole within the
context of the times in which he lived. I have tried to write in such a way
that the book could be read by general sociologists as well as by students of
Islam, but this means that Islamists will find an undue neglect of detail. In
defence I would make the plea that it is necessary to look at the picture as a
whole before we can see at what points further detailed study is needed. The
general standpoint from which I write is that of the sociology of knowledge-a
discipline which,. though still in its infancy, is characteristic of our age
and an expression of its spirit. Since practically nothing has been written
about the Islamic world from this standpoint, I have found it necessary to
re-examine and reassess much of the previous history of Islamic thought. This
re-assessment had largely been made, and the relevant sections of this book
written, before I began Islamic Philosophy and
Theology.

I
have to thank my eldest daughter for helping with the Index and my wife for
correcting proofs as well as putting up with the vagaries of a husband wrapped
up in the writing of a book.

W. MONTGOMERY
WATT

Edinburgh,
November 1962

I

THE
FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECTUAL

THIS book arises out of a concern felt by many
intellectuals. In the desperate predicament of the world in which they live can
they as intellectuals make any special contribution to saving it from the
destruction which threatens? It was once thought that ideas controlled the
course of history, and there are many remnants of this belief; but on the whole
it is now discredited. Many men, instead, tend to acknowledge the dominion of
economic and material factors, whether regretfully or eagerly. If ideas are
powerless, then the intellectual, as the bearer of ideas, has no important
functions.

In Islam and the Integration of Society I tried to show that, while economic and material factors
determine the setting of man’s life, ideational factors direct his responses to
the situations in which he found himself. Corresponding to this function of
ideas in the life of society will be the function of the intellectuals as the
persons primarily responsible for dealing with ideas. The present study is an
attempt to show in detail what this handling of ideas amounts to, and the
method is to examine the life and thought of one of the greatest intellectuals
of Islamic society, al-Ghazali.

It is convenient to speak of the intellectuals or
intelligentsia as if they constituted a single class. Yet as soon as one begins
to consider them closely, they appear to be manifold in their variety. There
are all those concerned with the handing on of ideas to other people, whether
school-teachers, university professors, journalists, broadcasters or writers of
books. There are all those

concerned with the application of ideas to detailed
situations; almost everyone does this to some extent, but we might think here specially
of politicians and civil servants. Even when, setting aside the transmission
and application of ideas, we confine ourselves to the creative handling of
ideas, there would still appear to be three aspects: instrumental,
systematizing and intuitive.

(a) The instrumental intellectual
par excellence is the scientist, who
investigates our environment and thereby increases our control over it. Even
the pure scientist, who does not think of the practical applications of his
work, is in fact performing this function for his society. At the present time
men are developing the social sciences, and thereby increasing the
possibilities of controlling society and other men. (b) Representatives of the
systematizing trend are the philosopher, the philosophically-minded scientist,
the theologian, the legal theorist, and perhaps the historian where he is
finding general rules implicit in particular events. (c) The intuitive
intellectual may be said to be concerned with the values acknowledged in a
society and their basis in reality. A prophetic leader like Muhammad, who
directed far reaching social and political movements, is a good example of the
intuitive intellectual. But in the same group would also come poets and other
litterateurs, and likewise historians and humanistic scholars. The politician
is placed here in so far as he is dealing with lofty and important issues.2

While these three aspects are
clearly distinct, they are probably seldom found in their pure state.
Systematization is usually a type of activity that does not proceed
automatically but requires an element of intuition. There may even be an
element of intuition lurking in the results of the scientist, especially of the
social scientist. The present study is chiefly concerned with the ideas which are
fundamental to the whole life of Islamic

society, and these belong
primarily to the intuitive aspect. Because of the intermingling of the aspects
in actual life, however, it will not be necessary to label particular men as
intuitives or systematizers. It is also to be noted that in so far as the
response to a situation is intuitive it is partly unconscious; the intellectual
need not be fully aware either of that to which he is responding or of the
precise manner of his response to it.

The phrase “bearers of ideas”
suggests a measure of passivity, but the intuitive intellectual is essentially
creative. Such creativity cannot be avoided. A society is a living thing, and
the situation to which it has to respond is constantly changing. Even where the
economic and material framework of its life is stable, there is a constant
movement of social adjustment which goes to constitute the given situation at
any time. The ideational basis of a relatively stable society has a certain
fixity, but it is also always undergoing modification in detail, even if only
in respect of emphasis. This modification is the work of the intuitive
intellectual. Ideas, too, even when they remain ostensibly unchanged, may
through material and social changes come to fulfill a different role in the
life of society. The outstanding case of this is where ideas, which were
originally sound and appropriate_ to the time, become ideological (in the
technical sense) through being used to bolster up a sectional privilege which
in the interests of society as a whole ought to be abolished. An example in the
field of religion is the case of the Pharisees in the New Testament. Their
ideas were substantially the same as those of the religious leaders of the Jews
some two hundred years earlier. In the earlier period the ideas were an
appropriate bastion for the defence of the Jewish religion against the cultural
attack of Hellenism; but in the later period they had become a vehicle for the
self-satisfied pride, complacency and even hypocrisy which we now associate
with Pharisaism.

It is not necessary here to try
to classify all the types of adaptation that are required of intellectuals, but
only to notice that there are several different types. In so far as the society
is a homogeneous one, the main types of adaptation will be to changed material
circumstances and to the changed social conditions arising out of the material
changes. The adaptation consists in the modification of the ideational basis of
the society so that activity in accordance with the new ideational basis is a
more satisfactory response to the existing situation. A society such as that of
the Islamic world, however, is not homogeneous. Besides the different social
classes there are-often cutting across class divisions-groups from divergent cultural
backgrounds. Here part of the work of the intellectual is to attempt to find an
ideational synthesis which will increase the integration in the society and
decrease the tensions. Ideally such an ideational synthesis is a complex of
ideas in which each group can find those elements in which it is chiefly
interested, and find them in a form which does not offend other groups. The
intellectual can only achieve this modification and adaptation in so far as he
is himself involved in his society and its tensions. Sometimes he can
deliberately bring about such involvement-as al-Ghazali did when he set about
studying the views of the philosophers and the Batinites and genuinely trying
to appreciate the truth in them. Where there is tension between two sections of
a society, there is a place for intellectuals in each section; but the most
satisfying and lasting work for an intellectual would appear to be in
maintaining a certain detachment from the contending factions.

A study such as the
present cannot be completely objective, since the writer’s own attitude to
religion enters into his assessment and presentation of the facts. The best way
to minimize the harmful effects of this subjective bias is to try to make
explicit what one’s attitude is.

So far as I am aware, then, the following three points
define the attitude to religion on which this investigation is based:

(1) Human life has
significance, meaning or transcendent value. The word “transcendent” here
indicates that this value is not negated by death or transiency, not even by
the disappearance of human life from the solar system.

(2) This
transcendent value is normally given what maybe called an “ontological basis”.
That is, it is demonstrated, or perhaps merely asserted, that reality is such
that the value is indeed transcendent; for example, Marxists assert that the
dialectic of history inevitably leads to the classless society. Whether this
“ontological basis” is true or false, and whether it is meaningful here to
speak about truth and falsehood, are questions belonging to another discipline.
All that is assumed in this study is that the “ontological basis” is a set of
ideas which has sociological functions. It might be said, of course, that such
an assumption implies that the “ontological basis” has a degree or measure of
truth.

(3) The language in which the
transcendent value and the “ontological basis” are expressed is closer to that
of poetry than to that of science. In pointing or hinting at the nature of
reality it is necessarily vaguer than language based on sense-experience. This
makes it possible for different religions and sects to refer to the same (or
almost the same) aspect of reality in ways that are superficially
contradictory. (The extent to which such contradictions are based on “pre-religious”
categories of thinking is a subject requiring further investigation.)

II
THE WORLD OF AL-GHAZALI

I THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND

IN a sense the background of the
life of any individual is the whole previous history of his civilization. For
an understanding of al-Ghazali it will be sufficient to glance briefly at the
history of the Islamic empire or caliphate from the death of Muhammad in 632 to
the birth of al-Ghazali in 1058. In these four centuries four main phases may
be distinguished, which may be labelled: conquests; conversion; disintegration;
reconstitution. These phases follow one another chronologically, but overlap to
some extent.

(1) The Conquests.As Muhammad lay on his deathbed
in Medina an expedition was being assembled on the outskirts of the town whose
task was in fact to open the way for the conquest of Syria. For the next two
years, however, the Muslim leaders were busy suppressing revolts in Arabia, but
in the following ten years the small state with its centre at Medina wrested
the rich provinces of Syria and Egypt from the Byzantine empire and that of
Iraq from the Persian empire, besides sending the latter reeling to
destruction. A hundred years after Muhammad’s death the sway of his successor
extended from north of the Pyrenees, through North Africa and the Fertile
Crescent to Central Asia (Transoxiana) and the Punjab.

The effective control of these
vast territories after the amazingly rapid conquest was made possible by the
simplicity of the central organization. The Arabs constituted themselves into a
vast army. At the extremities of their domains they had the help of auxiliaries
from such peoples as the Berbers, but otherwise the army of Arabs did all the
fighting and all the garrison-work. The local administrations were taken over and
continued to function much as before. All that the Arab provincial governors
had to do was to have direct supervision over the army and then to see that the
non-Arab local administration was effective and handed over the due taxes.

The head of
this state was called the caliph or successor (sc. of Muhammad), and had
inherited the latter’s administrative but not his prophetic functions; the
state is correspondingly known as the caliphate. From the description given it
will be seen that it is essentially an Arab-Muslim military aristocracy; or
rather, only those who are Arabs and Muslims are full citizens, serving in the
army and in return drawing an annual stipend. The non-Muslims were related to
the Muslim government not as individuals but as groups, later known as millets,
and usually with a religious basis; e.g. the Christians of Jerusalem or the
Jews of Iraq. Such a group had internal autonomy under its religious head, who
was responsible to the government for handing over the taxes. Since it was a
matter of honour for the ruler to make the official protection of such groups
effective, there was practically no religious persecution. Yet the suggestion
that these “protected persons” were second-class citizens meant that there was
a constant pressure on them to become Muslims. On the whole the system has
worked well and made life tolerable for millions; but it has tended to “freeze”
small groups and prevent their assimilation in the larger whole except at a
very slow rate (by conversions to Islam). The present troubles with minorities
in the Middle East are largely due to the breakdown of the millet system of the
Ottoman empire.

(2) Conversion.Islam was by tradition a
missionary religion, and was, at least implicitly, of universal validity.
Because of its Arabic origin, however, there was a tendency to think of it as
primarily for Arabs. This tendency was reinforced during the first century of
the caliphate by the desire of the Arab Muslims to retain their privileged
position as first-class citizens. Little effort was made in the early decades
to convert non-Arabs to Islam. When non-Arabs insisted on becoming Muslims,
whatever their motives may have been, they had to be attached to Arab tribes as
“clients”. This still had a suggestion of inferiority. As the number of
non-Arab Muslims increased, their discontent with their status and demand for
equality was one of the factors behind the movement which replaced the Umayyad
caliphs of Damascus (who had ruled from 660 to 750) by the ‘Abbasid caliphs of
Baghdad. This change was not simply a change of dynasty; it was a change of the
basis of the caliphate. The body politic was now more explicitly based on
Islamic principles and regarded as a “charismatic community”;’ and all Muslims,
whether Arab or not, were full citizens. The establishment of the ‘Abbasid
caliphate thus reflected the fact that many nonArabs had been converted to
Islam.

Yet the change of dynasty also
meant in various ways a return to Persian ideas of autocratic government. Under
the Umayyads power had been shared between the new Islamic aristocracy (who
received higher stipends because they or their ancestors had become Muslims at
an early date) and sections of the old Arab aristocracy. At many points actions
had been based on traditional Arab political ideas, derived from experience
with tribes and confederations of tribes; but in several ways this was
unsatisfactory, and unsuited for a vast empire. Under the earlier ‘Abbasids
power was almost exclusively in the hands of the caliph and his court. Since membership
of the court was virtually in the gift of the caliph, this meant that power was
in the hands of the caliph and one or two other men, such as the Barmakid
viziers; how far the caliph had to share his power depended on his strength and
capacity for controlling affairs. Within the court circle, that is, within the
ruling institution, there was practically no check on the autocratic decisions
of the caliph; and contemporary chronicles depict a naked struggle for power in
which nothing was barred. On the other hand, the relations between the ruling
institution and those ruled were largely determined by Islamic principles as
stated in the Shai a or revealed law. The general acceptance of Islamic
principles outside the court circle produced during the next century or two a
high degree of homogeneity in the vast and varied empire.

(3) Disintegration. After the first enthusiasm had
waned the ‘Abbasids found it increasingly difficult to exercise effective
control over their domains. Provincial governors had to be given large powers,
including the command of considerable armies. If they disliked some order from
the caliph, they could hardly be forced to obey it. They tended to present the
caliph with a series of faits accomplis, such
as the extension of the boundaries of their province, which he was obliged to
ratify. At length demands came that a son should succeed to the governorship,
and the caliph had to accede. Thus there came into being local dynasties, for
all practical purposes autonomous, but making a formal acknowledgement of the
supremacy of the caliph. This description is specially applicable to the east,
where there are four dynasties which deserve to be mentioned.

(a) Tahirids. Five men (four generations) of the
Tahirid family maintained themselves as governors of Khurasan from 820 to 872.
From the standpoint of the present study it is worth noting that the Tahirids,
by making Nishapur their capital, gave a fillip to its development as an
intellectual and cultural centre. Their downfall resulted not from any action
of the caliph but from military defeat by the first of the Saffarids.

(b) Saffarids. Three men of the
Saflaarid family, starting shortly before 868 from the governorship of Sijistan
(roughly southern Afghanistan), extended their rule (by 872) to most of
southern and eastern Persia up to the Oxus, and maintained themselves there
until about 903.

(c) Samanids. The Samanid family
is reckoned as having ruled from 874 to 999, and has a complex history which
need not be described here. The chief basis of their power was Transoxiana, and
their eastern capital, Bukhara, became a literary and cultural centre of great
brilliance? After they had wrested Khurasan from the Saffarids (900-910)
Nishapur became their second capital, not far behind Bukhara in the splendour
of its intellectual life.

(d) Ghaznavids. The Ghaznavid
dynasty (976-1186) was of Turkish race, being descended from officers in the
Samanid armies. Subuktigin became governor in the mountain town of Ghazna
(about a hundred miles south of Kabul in Afghanistan), and extended his power
both towards India and into eastern Persia. His son, Mahmud of Ghazna (regnabat 998-1030),repudiated
Samanid suzerainty, was appointed governor of Khurasan and Ghazna directly by
the caliph, and made great conquests in India. Soon after the death of Mahmud,
however, the dynasty began to be deprived by the Seljuqs of its domains in
Persia and Transoxiana, so that from about 1050 its rule was restricted to
Afghanistan and India.

Further west there were small dynasties which
developed from provincial governorships and continued to acknowledge the caliph
of Baghdad. In the west, however, there were also actual losses of territory. A
few years after the overthrow of the Umayyad caliph by the ‘Abbasids, a member
of the Umayyad family became independent ruler of Spain, though without
claiming to be caliph. Such a claim was first made by the Fatimids, a dynasty
which established itself first in Tunisia in 909, and then in 969 transferred
the seat of its power to Egypt. The Fatimid rulers claimed to be the rightful
caliphs of the whole Islamic world, and sent emissaries into the ‘Abbasid
domains to preach revolution. No more need be said about the Fatimids here,
since their propaganda (also known as Isma’ilite or Batinite) became a major
concern for al-Ghazali (chapter IV).

(4) Reconstitution.The word “reconstitution” is not
altogether satisfactory as a description of the fourth phase of the caliphate,
but it is convenient to have a single word. In this phase the caliph loses most
of his remaining power, though he retains his position as a figurehead with
certain official functions and dignities. Real power passed into the hands of a
series of warlords, who eventually came to have the title of “sultan”. The
first of these war-lords was Ibn-Ra’iq, who entered Baghdad at the head of an
army in 936 and simply took over the machinery of government from the caliph’s
vizier. As a Muslim historian puts it: 3

“From this time the power of the viziers ceased. The vizier
no longer had control of the provinces, the bureaux or the departments; he had
merely the title of vizier, and the right of appearing on ceremonial days at
the Palace in black with sword and belt.”

Ibn-Ra’iq held this lofty
position for less than two years, but in 945 Baghdad was captured by the
Buwayhid (or Buyid) family-chiefs of a warlike highland tribe from Daylam, at
the south of the Caspian Sea-who assumed the reins of government, and held
them, though latterly with a slackening grip, until 1055. Their direct rule
extended over Iraq and a large part of Persia, but provinces were entrusted to
different members of the family, and these did not always see eye to eye.

The Buwayhids eventually fell
before another family of war-lords, the Seljuqs, who, supported by Turkish
tribesmen, first made themselves masters of Khurasan, and then in 1055
established themselves in Baghdad. At its widest extent their empire was much
greater than that of the Buwayhids, including Syria in the west and Transoxiana
and the whole of Persia in the east. This was the situation during the maturity
of al-Ghazali, but before his death in 1111 the central government was
weakening and it eventually disintegrated in 1157. This is as far as we need
follow the history of the caliphate.

This phase of reconstitution has various aspects.
While in one way it was the end of the rule of the caliphs, in another way it
was a restoration to the central government of the territories directly under
the caliph. In this new central government the place of military power was more
explicit. The early conquests had been made by a citizen army, but in course of
time a citizen army was shown to have disadvantages. In any case, after
conversion became frequent there were too many citizens for the army. In
practice it was found more satisfactory to have mercenaries, though this meant
that the officers of the mercenaries might have undue power. It was becoming
clear that political power depended on military backing. Those who were
successful in the struggle for power, like the Buwayhids and the Seljuqs, were
groups of men-not isolated individuals-who had effective military support that
was in part independent of monetary payments. Political power partly also
depended on the acquiescence of the citizens, and this was gained by
recognition of the Islamic basis of society-acknowledgement of the caliph,
participation in worship on certain occasions, continuation of courts applying
the Shari a. In major political decisions, however, and in the functioning of
the court Islamic principles counted for nothing.

Despite this
apparently unsatisfactory state of affairs (at least from a theoretical
standpoint), the earlier part of the Seljuq period, especially the reigns of
Alp-Arslan (1063-72) and Malik-Shah (1072--92), was a time of comparative peace
and prosperity and of great cultural achievement 4 To this happy condition the
wise and efficient vizier of these two sultans, Nizam-al-Mulk, made an
outstanding contribution. Though nominally subordinate to the sultan, he was
practically all-powerful during these thirty years.

2 THE RELIGIOUS AND INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND

The religion of Islam in its earlier forms was adapted to
the social and intellectual needs of Mecca, Medina and Arabia.s But the
framework of material circumstances in which
it had to function even under the Umayyad caliphs was entirely different from
that of Muhammad’s closing years.

The first phase of development,
the conquests, quite apart from the effects on the subject peoples, involved a
vast social upheaval for the Arabs, that is, the Muslims. The old tribal and
clan system broke down; and, since it was through the tribe that a man’s life
became meaningful, this led to a religious as well as a social crisis. An
important section of the Arabs dealt with this crisis by substituting for the
tribe the Islamic community. Life became meaningful for them through membership
of this community, since it was divinely founded and was living in accordance
with divinely-given mores. But the question of how to deal with those who transgressed
God’s commands proved intractable, and there was much bitter argument before it
was solved. In the end, however, a way was found by which the whole community,
despite the presence of sinners in it, could be regarded as a “saving sect”, so
that membership led to everlasting bliss.6

The phase of “conversion” was a
piece of social adjustment following on the incorporation of vast territories
and their inhabitants in the Islamic empire. While some material self-interest
may have been a factor in conversion, the major factor was perhaps the
religious one-the attractiveness of the dynamic image of the Islamic community
as a charismatic one. Men felt they wanted really to belong to this, not just
to be loosely attached to it. The conception of the Islamic community as
charismatic, originally developed for Arab tribesmen whose tribe had broken
down, was further developed by the non-Arab Muslims. The distinctive
excellences of the community, especially its possession in the Shari’a of a
divinely-revealed law or rather set of practices, were linked with its
charismatic nature. Zeal for the charismatic community was an important factor
behind the incredible intellectual efforts expended in the elaboration of the
Shari’a.

In the course of elaborating the
Sharia something else was also done. Many of the new converts came from a
higher cultural level than the Arabs,
and naturally retained most of their culture. The pious scholars in whose hands
the Shari’a took shape not merely developed the principles found in the Qur’an
by adding to them the Traditions, that is, anecdotes about Muhammad’s words and
practices. Somehow or other, almost without any conscious deception, these
scholars managed to include among the Traditions much of the inherited wisdom
of the Middle East, transmitted through Christian, Jewish, Gnostic and other
sources. To the modern student this is all the more remarkable since Muslims
had a complex system of criticism of Traditions. Careful examination, however,
shows that this system was not aimed at ascertaining objective historical fact,
but at excluding the views of the eccentrics or “lunatic fringe”; and this it
largely succeeded in doing. The effect of systematic criticism was in fact to
stabilize the Islamic religion on a new ideational basis, namely, that amalgam
of Qur’anic principle, early practice and older lore which had come to be
accepted by the main body of Muslims round about the year 8oo. This amalgam, it
is to be noted, did not include the higher learning of the Middle East, such as
Greek philosophy and science; and the correct attitude to these “ foreign “
sciences is one of the problems which al-Ghazali had to tackle.

By these ideational
developments the religion of Islam adapted itself with considerable adequacy to
the changes of the first two phases of conquest and conversion. The point where
its adaptation had been least adequate was within
the ruling institution. There Persian traditions of autocracy and the
unprincipled use of power had become dominant, even though in the relations of
the rulers to the ruled Islamic principles continued to be respected. In the
succeeding phases this impotence of Islamic principles in the topmost political
levels-so curious in view of Islam’s reputation in Europe of being a political
religion-contributed to the difficulties
of the intellectual class, and so to the major problem al-Ghazali had to solve.

It would be
convenient to describe with similar brevity the religious and ideational
repercussions of the third and fourth historical stages (of disintegration and
reconstitution); but unfortunately it is not possible. These repercussions have
not yet been properly investigated from the standpoint of this study. Moreover,
their investigation cannot be altogether separated from the problem of
al-Ghazali himself. As our understanding of this great man increases, we get
more light on what had been happening in the two centuries or so before his
birth. The economic, political, social, intellectual and religious happenings
of these centuries made the setting in which his life had to be lived. It is
part of the aim of this study to discover the salient features of that setting
and what had most contributed to making them what they were. At this
preliminary stage in the investigation three points may be noted.

(a) The standard Islamic
ideational system had taken root nearly everywhere. The war-lords were under
the necessity of recognizing it publicly in all their dealings with the
populace. Consequently the disintegration of the caliphate under the war-lords
led not to a diminution of Islamic intellectual culture but to its
encouragement in numerous local centres. Among the most vigorous of these
centres was Nishapur and the surrounding region, where al-Ghazali’s early life
was spent.

(b) In the fourth phase, and also
in the third phase though less obviously, supreme rule belonged to superior
military force. This happened in a community which had hitherto been regarded
as charismatic or divinely-constituted. Did it mean that the community lost its
charismatic nature? Was the difficulty a serious one for the men of the time?

(c) Al-Ghazali’s abandonment of
the standard career of a religious intellectual or scholar-jurist8 suggests
that there was something wrong with this career. Was it that it implied
subservience to godless rulers? Were the intellectuals trying to find the
significance of their lives in a framework in which Islam was irrelevant? Was
the difficulty that the Shari’a, whose ostensible purpose was to direct the
affairs of the body politic, obviously did not do this?

Al-Ghazali himself in his
autobiography speaks of four groups of men who were trying to find an adequate
response to the situation, and we can do no better than follow his guidance and
investigate the attitudes of these four groups: the philosophers; the Batinites
or Isma’ilites; the theologians (among whom we may make a further distinction
between Ash’arites and Hanbalites); the Sufis or mystics.

It remains to say a word about a
fifth possible response to the situation, a response in which al-Ghazali might
have been interested but in fact was not-the Persian renascence. Before the
Arab conquest of Persia the Zoroastrian clergy, to preserve their power as an
intellectual class, had become closely allied with the rulers and subservient
to them. In so doing they had largely become cutoff from the ordinary people.
When the phase of conversion began, therefore, it was not surprising that many
Persians became Muslims. The Persian Muslims had much to do with the
establishing of the ‘Abbasid dynasty, and in return the equality of all
Muslims, Arab and non-Arab, came to be generally recognized. After a time there
was a movement among the secretary class or civil service which maintained the
inferiority of the Arabs; but this Shu’ubite movement, as it was called, was
chiefly a literary movement, it would seem, without much political influence.
Other forms of Persian self-assertion are connected with Manichaeanism and with
certain sects of Shi‘ite Islam.9

The real awakening of the Persian
spirit, however, did not come until after the phase of disintegration. Local or
provincial dynasties, especially the Samanids, were a focus for hopes and
aspirations. It should not be supposed, of course, that there already was a
Persian nationalism comparable to the nationalisms of the nineteenth century.
There was potentially something similar to these nationalisms, but it had to
become conscious of itself. The chief part in bringing about this national
selfawareness was played by Firdawsi (d. 1020-1025). His great epic, the Shah-ndma, welded many local traditions
into a unity and gave men of Persian descent a renewed enthusiasm for the
perennial mission of Iran-defence of civilization from the inroads of Turan,
the Turkish “barbarians” from the great steppes. This was a mission which could
be combined with membership of the Islamic empire, though one imagines that the
Persians would have found it difficult to go on for centuries serving these two
masters, Persian secular aggrandizement and the extension of Islam.

In favourable circumstances this
Persian movement might have grown and become of much political significance.
Circumstances were against it, however. Before Firdawsi had completed his great
poem the sun of the Samanids was setting, and in the ascendant was the star of a
Muslim Turkish general, Mahmud of Ghazna. Indeed, Mallmud became Firdawsi’s
patron, though it is not surprising in view of his Turkish origin that he and
the poet fell out.10 He was soon followed by the Seljuqs, more Muslim Turks.
With Persia largely under Turkish rule Firdawsi’s conception of the roles of
Iran and Turan had become no more than a political mirage. Persians had become
weaker politically, and in their place Turks were now the military defenders of
Muslim civilization. This was the position from a few years before al-Ghazali’s
birth, and it is thus understandable that, though he must have had much Persian
blood in his veins, he never seems to have been attracted by a “Persian”
solution of current problems or even to have shown special interest in things Persian. 10a

3 AL-GHAZALI’S EARLY LIFE

The central figure of this study was born in 1058, four
and a half centuries after the migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, and
three years after the establishment of Seljuq rule in Baghdad. His birth-place
was the town or district of Tus, near the modern Meshed in north-east Persia.
His name was Muhammad, and he was son of Muhammad, son of Muhammad; he had the
honorific title (kunya) of Abu-Hamid,
meaning father of Hamid but not necessarily implying that he had a son of this
name (certainly only daughters survived him). He is best known as al-Ghazali,
the Ghazalite, possibly meaning the man from Ghazala, an otherwise unknown
village in the region of Tus;11 he is sometimesalso called at-Tusi, the Tusite. He had one brother, Ahmad, who
became a distinguished scholar and mystic, and several sisters.

Nothing is known for certain
about his family except that he had a grand-uncle (or less probably uncle),
also called Abu-Hamid al-Ghazali, who was one of the scholars of Tus and died
about 1043. The family was thus in touch with intellectual circles, as is also
shown by the father’s anxiety that his two sons should receive the fullest
possible education. The assertion in some sources that the theologian’s father
was a spinner and vendor of wool is to be rejected, since it appears to be an
inference from the less probable spelling and derivation of the name Ghazali.
It may be accepted, however, that the father was comparatively poor. On his
death he left as much money as he could with a Sufi friend, charging him to see
that the two boys were well educated. When the money was exhausted the friend
made arrangements for them to go to a college or madrasa where they could receive free board and lodging as well as
instruction. This very brief glimpse of al-Ghazali’s family shows that the
family background was not without its influence on his later career. His father
would be characterized by the simple piety of ordinary Muslims, based no doubt
on a considerable knowledge of the Qur’an and the Traditions which could be
gained by attendance at the lectures given freely in the mosques. Towards the
end of his life al-Ghazali wrote a book in which he advocated prohibiting
ordinary people from attending lectures on theology,12 but this must be taken
to apply only to the abstruse rational theology of the time and not to the more
concrete forms of religious instruction.

No dates are recorded for the
earlier part of al-Ghazali’s education. The normal age to begin schooling was eleven,
and he would be eleven in 1069.13 In 1077 he went to an important school or
college at Nishapur, the capital of this part of Persia, to study under the
most distinguished theologian of the age, al-Juwayni.14 In the intervening.
years he pursued his studies mainly at Tus, apart from a visit to Gurgan
(Jurjan) at the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea. (Nishapur is about fifty
miles from Tus, Gurgan over three hundred, the road passing through Nishapur;
these were comparatively short journeys for a great scholar.)15 The story is
told of how the caravan in which the young student was travelling back from
Gurgan was set upon by robbers. Among the goods they seized were the notebooks,
with the harvest of his study in Gurgan. He went after the robbers and pled for
the return of his notebooks, which contained, as he phrased it, the knowledge
he had gained at Gurgan. The robber-chief scoffed at this alleged knowledge
which could be taken away so easily, but gave back the notebooks. The visit to
Gurgan cannot have been later than 1074, since al-Ghazali on his return spent
three years committing his “knowledge” to memory.

In these years of
study at Tus, Gurgan and Nishapur, al-Ghazali followed the standard curriculum
of Islamic higher education. This had a predominantly legal slant. The basis
was the study of the Qur’an and Traditions, together with the commentaries on
these. Jurisprudence was derived mainly from the Traditions. Then there were
ancillary sciences such as Arabic grammar, differences between the recognized
legal rites, and biographical knowledge of the transmitters of Traditions. In
al-Ghazali’s case, at least until he went to Nishapur, the chief emphasis was
on Traditions and jurisprudence. In these subjects the standard of instruction
in Tits and Gurgan may well have. been high. For over a century Nishapur and
the neighbouring regions had been in the forefront of educational development,
doubtless owing to the virtual independence of the Samanids and their patronage
of learning and the arts,

Instruction in the “Islamic
sciences” had originally been given in mosques without any fees, and this
practice continued. Gradually, however, special institutions were created. At
first they may have consisted merely of a room or hall and a library. In course
of time living-quarters for the students were added, and funds made available
for their support. To this latter form of institution the name madrasa is given, which may be rendered
“college”. The first such college seems to have been founded in Nishapur before
960, and this was followed within the century by several others. The movement
of college-founding was vigorously encouraged by Nizam-al-Mulk, the great
Seljuq vizier (in power from 1063 to 1092). One source suggests that he was the
first to provide “scholarships” for the students; but some earlier cases are
known.16 What is certain is that he founded at least nine Nizamiyya colleges,
scattered from Mosul to Herat, and that they were lavishly endowed. In 1077
Nishapur had enjoyed relative peace under the Seljuqs for nearly forty years,
whereas Baghdad had been the scene of strife, which must have made academic
work difficult, till after the Seljuq occupation in log g. It might, therefore,
be expected that the level of academic attainment in the region of Nishapur
would be among the highest in the Islamic world.

In particular, when al-Ghazali
went to Nishapur in 1077 it was to the Nizamiyya college he went, attracted by
the fame of the great theologian, Abu-’l-Ma’ali al-Juwayni, known as
Imam-al-Haramayn, “the imam of the two holy places” (Mecca and Medina).
Al-Juwayni was the son of a professor or lecturer at Nishapur, but was admitted
by all to be more brilliant than his father. He was primarily a theologian, and
introduced al-Ghazali to theology, perhaps the most difficult of the Islamic
sciences. Al-Ghazali remained at Nishapur until al-Juwayni’s death in August
1085, and latterly helped with teaching. Then he went to the camp of
Nizam-al-Mulk, and was received by the vizier with honour and respect, though
still only twenty-seven. Though one would have expected him to go on teaching
in Nishapur, the records suggest that he spent the whole of the next few years
at the camp, until his appointment as professor at the Nizamiyya college in
Baghdad in July 1091.17

Thus we see that al-Ghazali had
an education as good as any to be had in the Islamic world. Al-Juwayni was the
first theologian of his time. His teachers in Tradition were not so eminent,
but his inexactitude in quoting Traditions and his use of uncanonical
Traditions are probably due mainly to his own slackness and unorthodoxy.
Education, too, had struck deep roots in the region round Nishapur and Tus, and
had influenced many classes of society. This meant that al-Ghazali, while
gaining an excellent education, was not cut off from the simple but
well-informed faith of the ordinary people. Al-Ju-wayni is reported to have
made a statement which indicates how the younger man was moulded by the older
in this point and in others:18

“I heard Abu-’l-Ma’ali al-Juwayni saying, I had read
thousands of books; then I left the people of Islam with their religion and
their manifest sciences in these books, and I embarked on the open sea,
plunging into the literature the people of Islam rejected. All this was in quest
of truth. At an early age I fled from the acceptance of others’ opinions (taqlid). But now I have returned from
everything to the word of the Truth, ‘Hold to the religion of the old women’.
If the Truth does not grasp me by the grace of His justice, so that I die in
the religion of the old women and the result of my life is sealed at my
departure with the purity of the people of Truth and the word of sincerity,
‘There is no god but God’, then alas for the son of al-Juwayni (that is,
himself).”

III

THE ENCOUNTER WITH PHILOSOPHY

1 THE PHILOSOPHICAL
MOVEMENT IN
THE ISLAMIC WORLD

IN its main outlines the story is well known of how Greek
philosophy entered the Islamic world and was partly incorporated into Islamic
theology, but about the details there is stillmuch obscurity.1 The aim of this and the following section is not
to investigate some of the many remaining obscurities, but to look at the place
of the philosophers in Islamic society.

It was only under the early
‘Abbasids that Muslims began to have effective contacts with Greek learning,
though within the territories ruled by the caliph this was still alive at a
number of Christian colleges, notably one at Gunde-Shapur (or Junday-sabur,
about a hundred miles north-east of Basra). The decisive step was taken by the
caliph al-Mansur (regnabat 754-775), whose health was not good, when in 765 he summoned to his court
a doctor from Gunde-Shapur, George of the Persian-Nestorian family of
Bokhtishu‘; until 870 the post of court
physician was held by George and his descendants, and other members of the
family are heard of subsequently.2 From 765 onwards interest in all the aspects
of Greek learning grew in the court circle, encouraged by such men as the
Barmakid family of viziers. Noted patrons and amateurs of Greek learning were
Harun ar-Rashid (regnabat 786-809)
and his son al-Ma’mun (813-833). Under the three caliphs mentioned and their
immediate successors a beginning was made with the work of translating
Greek books into Arabic (usually from the Syriac translations already possessed
by the Christian colleges), and a few bold spirits would attempt to combine
Greek and Islamic ideas.

Three
main stages may be distinguished in the work of translation. The first is that
already described. To begin with, the patronage was sporadic, but al-Ma’mun
gave the matter an institutional basis by setting up a “house of
wisdom” (bayt al-hikma), which
was both a library and a centre for the copying and translating of books. By
850 a fair number of Greek medical texts and several of the works of Aristotle and
other philosophers were available in Arabic. Since an Arabic technical
vocabulary in these disciplines had to be created, the achievement was
considerable, even if some of the more abstruse works were still imperfectly
comprehended. The second stage is that of Hunayn ibn-Is’haq (regnabat 808-873) and his son and other
pupils. Hunayn was of Arab descent, had studied grammar at Basra and medicine
at Baghdad, and then travelled widely in the Byzantine empire as well as the
Islamic. From his travels he brought back an excellent knowledge of Greek and a
valuable collection of manuscripts. His scholarly standards in translation were
of the highest; for him a necessary preliminary of translations was the
construction of a critical Greek text. In general the translations of Hunayn
and his school reached a new level of accuracy and comprehension. The third
stage in the work of translation corresponds roughly to the tenth century.
Owing to the development of original philosophical writing in Arabic there was
a more profound understanding of the problems and a richer technical
vocabulary. Some of the older translations were revised (as Hunayn also had
done). Such fresh translations as were made, however, were from Syriac and not
directly from Greek.

It was
mainly out of the work of translation that the independent philosophical
movement grew in the Islamic world. In this movement there are various trends.
With the attachment to the caliphal court of the family of Bokhtishi‘, the
medical tradition of Gunde-Shapur began to take root in Baghdad. There was a
hospital under the supervision of the court physician, and here medical
teaching was given. There was probably also some instruction in philosophy;
certainly all doctors of the period studied philosophy.

A
second important strand was the philosophical tradition of Alexandria. The
great college at Alexandria had never had very close relations with its Coptic
speaking Egyptian hinterland, being essentially a Greek institution. It is
significant that Syriac had begun to replace Greek before the Arab conquest.
This latter event presumably led to the withdrawal of the remaining
Greek-speaking (as distinct from Syriac-speaking or Coptic-speaking) teachers.
The connection with Syriac scholarship doubtless determined the selection of
Antioch as a new site for the college about 718, when it had presumably become
too small to continue in Egypt. Round about 850 there was another move, this
time westwards to Harran (about halfway along the route to Mosul), and towards
900 yet another, to Baghdad. These moves were essentially moves of the
teachers, the living bearers of the philosophical tradition, though on some
occasions they are also reported as having taken the library with them. From
about 850 something is known about the chief philosophers connected with this
tradition. In particular there was a lively philosophical coterie meeting in
the house of Abu-Sulayman al-Mantigi as-Sijistani in Baghdad in the last
quarter of the tenth century.3

There were also other strands about which we are not so well
informed. The so-called sect of Sibi’ans in Harran had made some study of Greek
philosophy, and certain members of it became involved in the translation work
and the philosophical movement in Baghdad. The college transferred from Antioch
to Harran, however, seems to have been separate and under Christian direction.
In the eastern parts of the caliphate there were also some philosophical
studies, which made possible the appearance of a man like Muhammad ibn-Zakariya
ar-Razi. It seems likely that philosophical works were translated into Persian
at Gunde-Shapur and elsewhere, but the suggestion that works of Aristotle were
translated from Persian into Arabic has been shown to be without foundation.4

What of
the people who were involved in this philosophical movement? Who were they,
what was their position in society, and why were they interested in philosophy?

First
of all there were the caliphs like al-Mansur and al-Ma’mun. As they became
aware of the “foreign sciences” which were being cultivated within their
empire, they must have wanted to gain what practical benefits were to be had
from them. Medical treatment had obvious advantages, and so doctors are found
to have played a large part in the philosophical movement. Astrology was also
assigned a high practical importance, and the contemporary amalgam of astrology
and astronomy was much cultivated. Mathematics, too, had its practical use. The
same could not be said of philosophy, but it may have been included because it
was closely linked with the other branches of Greek learning. In any case it
was a part of this new, exciting and in some ways “higher” culture.

Al-Ma’mun
had as friends and advisers a group of Islamic theologians known as
Mu‘tazilites. Some of these had been involved in defending Islam by argument
against non-Muslims, and they soon perceived the usefulness of Greek logic and
other Greek philosophical ideas in such arguments. Consequently they boldly
engaged in speculation, and interpreted traditional Islamic doctrines in terms
of Greek ideas to the scandal of the more conservative theologians. They will
have to be discussed more fully at a later stage of this study. Here, after
this brief mention, they may be left aside, since they were not philosophers but
theologians who to a limited extent made use of Greek ideas.

At a later period than that of al-Ma’mun, minor rulers in the
provinces are found patronizing students of philosophy and the other Greek
sciences. In some cases they may have been chiefly interested in a man’s
medical knowledge; but al-Farabi, who never practised as a doctor, was
well-received at the court of Sayf-ad-Dawla in Syria (about 945). In such a
case it may be that the local ruler was emulating the court of the caliph; but
it is also conceivable that he may have wanted to maintain a degree of
independence from the scholar-jurists (though this is a point which requires
further investigation).

Of the
many Christians involved in the philosophical movement nothing will be said
here, since their motives can only be understood in the context of the history
of the relations between Christianity and philosophy. Some of the Christians
gained a living as doctors, others had positions in their ecclesiastical
institutions.

The
point on which our attention must be focussed is the chain of Muslim
philosophers and the position of each in society.

(1) The earliest of all,
al-Kindi5 (c. 800-866 or-873), known as “the philosopher of the Arabs”,
came from an Arab family which had held official posts rising to the
governorship of Kufa. He himself was attached to the caliphal court, and was
tutor to a son of one of the caliphs. He had a large library, presumably mainly
of books in the Greek sciences, in which he was an expert. The library was
removed to Basra to inconvenience him as the result of a court intrigue, but
was subsequently restored.

(2) A pupil of al-Kindi’s, Ahmad
ibn-at-Tayyib as-Sarakhsi (d. 896), had administrative and other positions at
the caliph’s court, including the tutorship of a future caliph, but had time to
write about philosophy.6

(3) After the transference of the
former Alexandrian college from Harran to Baghdad a man called Ibn-Karnib is
said to have become head of it (shortly after 900?). His father and brother
were mathematicians and wrote on astronomy, and he himself is said to have been
both a theologian (mutakallim) and a
natural-scientist. He earned his living, however, as a secretary (or civil
servant).

(4) The great
physician ar-Razi, known in Europe as Rhazes (865-923 or -932), completed his
education at Baghdad, though he spent the early part of his life at Rayy (near
modern Teheran). He worked as a physician at a hospital in Baghdad and at the
courts of several provincial rulers.

(5) Al-Farabi
(873-950), “the second Teacher” (Aristotle being the first), was born in
Turkestan, but eventually came to Baghdad and studied philosophy and other
Greek sciences. How he supported himself is not clear, but he lived an ascetic
life and may have needed little. In his closing years he was at the court of
Sayf-ad-Dawla of Aleppo (regnabat 944-967),
occupied in writing books and teaching.7

(6) Close to the
philosophical circle stood the widely travelled bookseller Ibn-an-Nadim (d. c.
996), whose Fihrist or Catalogue (of all existing Arabic books
known to him, with biographical notes on the authors) is a mine of information
about many subjects, including the philosophical movement here described.

(7) A minor figure
was ‘Isa (d. 1001), son of the “good vizier” ‘Ali ibn-‘Isa. Hewas a secretary to the caliphs, and
one of the fewmen in the philosophical circles of
whom we know definitely that he had made some study of the Islamic sciences, in
particular of Tradition.

(8) From at least
about 980 there flourished in Baghdad a most varied philosophical circle,
meeting in the house of Abu-Sulayman as-Sijistani, “the logician” (d. after
1001). Students from many different backgrounds interested in one or other of
the Greek sciences met and discussed topics of literary, scientific or
philosophical interest. Though Abu-Sulayman stood well in the eyes of the
Buwayhid prince ‘Adud-ad-Dawla (regnabat
in Baghdad 977-983), he appears to have held no official post but to have
lived in retirement, apart from the meetings in his house.

(9) Some of these discussions have been described
by the host’s younger friend, Abu-Hayyan at-Taw’hidi (d. after 1010). This man
was a Persian with Mu’tazilite leanings, and a man of letters rather than a
philosopher; he also knew something of Islamic law. By profession he was a
scribe and amanuensis, latterly serving as secretary to viziers and other court
officials in Baghdad and the provinces.

(10)
Ibn-Khammar (d. 1017), a Christian who became a Muslim, was a physician and
philosopher who latterly was at the courts of Khwarizm and Ghazna in the east.

(11) Another man who was not exactly a philosopher
was the Persian Miskawayh (d. 1030), who was secretary and librarian to several
viziers.

(12) A
man with considerable philosophical talent was “the Sahib”, Ibn-’Abbad (d.
995),the son of a secretary in Rayy,
who rose to be vizier there and made himself semi-independent.

(13)
Ibn-Hindu (d. after 1018), another Persian, though perhaps of Indian
extraction, was a secretary of Persian princes.

(14)
The great Ibn-Sins or Avicenna (980-1037), probably another Persian, was the
son of a minor administrator in Transoxiana under the Samanid dynasty. His
first interest in philosophy came from a Fatimid propagandist, though he also
had some traditional Islamic instruction. An otherwise unknown teacher
introduced him to the works of the Greek philosophers and scientists, and he
continued to read them by himself until he had fully mastered their contents.
The chance purchase of a book by al-Farabi gave him fresh insight, which
completed his philosophical development. He worked as a high minister of state
at various courts in the unsettled times of the early eleventh century.8

(15)Shortly after these men a
self-taught physician and philosopher appears in Cairo, Ibn-Bidwan (d. 1061).9

(16) Abu’l-Hasan Said Hibatallah
(d. 1102) was physician in charge of a hospital in Baghdad and also a
philosopher.

(17)
Ibn-Jazla (d. 1100), a pupil of the last-named, was originally a Christian, but
was persuaded by his Mu’tazilite instructor in logic, Abu-’Ali ibn-al-Walid, to
become a Muslim. He subsequently obtained an official post at the law-courts.

What
stands out clearly from this list is that the bearers of the Greek sciences and
the new Islamic philosophy were quite different from the bearers of Islamic religious
learning.

Only in
one or two cases are men with a competence in philosophy reported to have made
any advanced study of Traditions or the Shari‘a; and it may be that even these
few had not progressed far. Moreover, those who pursued philosophical studies,
unless they were doctors or found a patron at some court, were unable to gain a
living from their studies but had to work as secretaries or in humbler ways.
For philosophy to flourish as it did there must have been many enthusiasts
among them.

The
close link between the philosophical movement and the class of secretaries or
civil servants suggests the question whether there is any connection between
this attraction of philosophy for them in the tenth and eleventh centuries and
the interest they showed in Manichaeanism in the eighth century. Then it seems
probable that the class of secretaries, conscious that from Sasanian times they
had been the bearers of Perso-Iraqian culture, saw in Manichaeanism a basis
from which to criticize the growing class of Islamic scholar-jurists, which was
threatening to become a dangerous rival.10 In the tenth and eleventh centuries
this rivalry still existed, and philosophy also might provide a basis for
criticism; but the next section will show that there is little that can be
called an attack on the scholar-jurists, only attempts at self-justification
with a view to self-preservation. If there is anything in the suggestion above
that the rulers interested in philosophy were anxious to reduce their
dependence on the scholar-jurists, their support of the secretary-philosophers
would coalesce with the latter’s effort to remain independent. What has been
said in this paragraph is all somewhat conjectural, but it does not affectthe fact of the link between the secretaries and the philosophical
movement.

The
essence of the situation was that there were two separate educational systems
in the Islamic empire, the old Greek one and the new Islamic one. It was not
unlike the situation in most Islamic countries during the past century, when
there was the traditional Islamic educational system with its crown in
universities like al-Az’har in Cairo and a modern system culminating in
Western-style universities. The parallel must not be pressed too far, however.
There was much less organization in medieval times, and in particular the study
of Greek science and philosophy was hardly organized at all except at the
teaching hospitals, and it is doubtful whether we are justified in speaking of
a philosophical school or college at Baghdad except in the sense that there was
a group of like-minded people. There was certainly such a group, however, and
there was certainly continuity in their thought. Before trying to say any more
about them we must consider some of the things they themselves said.

2 THE SOCIAL RELEVANCE OF
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS

One of the basic conceptions of this study is that, whether men are
aware of it or not, their ideas reflect social facts and social aspirations.
Plato had an understanding of our problem, and in the Republic gives prominence to the parallelism between an
individual’s powers and the class-structure of society. The ideal state for him
was one where the intellectuals were the ruling class, and in accordance with
this view he engaged in politics to the extent of trying to make the ruler of a
small state a philosopher-prince. Yet he was also aware of the difficulty of
realizing this ideal in practice. There is another strand in his thought which
distinguishes between the unchanging world of the forms and the ordinary world
of becoming and dissolution, genesis and
phthora. According to this strand of
his thought the proper work of the intellect or reasonand so, we infer, of the
intellectual-is not in controlling the mutable things of space and time, but in
dealing with the immutable forms; in other words, the intellectuals contract
out of politics, and leave public affairs to those who have the knack. The
allegory of the cave in the Republic attempts
to explain why the philosophers, who know the realities of which the shadows
are seen in the cave, are often worse at dealing with the shadows than those
who have not philosophized. These strands were still present in the Greek
philosophical tradition when, more than a millennium after Plato, it thrust
itself upon the Muslims;’ and the position of philosophers in Hellenistic and
Byzantine society was a factor, even if a minor one, in determining the place
of philosophers in Islamic society.

(a) Ar-Razi

In surveying the social
implications of Islamic philosophical thought it is convenient to begin with
ar-Razi (d. 923 or 932), though he was younger than al-Kindi. He stands
somewhat apart from the other great philosophers of Islam, being less under the
influence of Proclus than they.

Ar-Razi accepts the Platonic
conception of the soul as tripartite,12 which implies the superiority of
reason; and he has much to say about the control of the passions by reason.
Reason is also the source of all civilized life:

“God gave us
reason, chiefly that we might attain the utmost benefits we are capable of,
both temporal and eternal. It is the greatest of God’s gifts; nothing is more
profitable for us. By Reason we are superior to the brute beasts; we subjugate
them, and employ them in ways useful both to us and them. By Reason we apprehend
all that elevates us, and beautifies and enriches our life; by it we attain our
heart’s desire. By Reason we learn how to build and sail ships, and thereby
reach lands beyond the seas. By it we acquire the medical art, to the great
advantage of our bodies, and the other useful arts. By it we apprehend what is
obscure, far-off and concealed. By itwe
know the shape of earth and sky, and the magnitude, distance and motions of
sun, moon and stars. By it we come to knowledge of the Creator, the summit of
our comprehension and chief source of our welfare. In short, without Reason our
condition would be that of beasts, children and madmen.”13

Despite this realization of the
contribution of Reason to the fabric of the life of the community, ar-Razi
shows no desire that reason should guide and control political affairs. He
advises people not to try to raise their status by engaging in politics. He
defends himself against the charge of having consorted with princes, by
pointing out that he has held no appointment in the army or civil service, but
has merely treated the prince’s body when he was ill, and given him counsel in
health. He has not aimed at increasing his wealth, but has been content with a
modest sufficiency; and we know that he must have worked incessantly at his
medical and other scientific studies and in writing his numerous books. His
ideal is what he calls “the philosophic life”, a life of intellectual activity.
The rational part of the soul falls short of its true nature unless it “sees
the wonder and grandeur of the world, meditates on it and marvels at it, and
has an insatiable desire for knowledge of all that is in it, especially the
science of the body in which it finds itself and its shape and condition after
death”14

The most positive things he has
to say about political life are in a little essay entitled The Signs of Worldly Advancement and Political Power. The theme of
this is that certain people are marked out to be rulers of men. Nature has
endowed them with qualities of character such as nobility and perhaps a certain
personal magnetism which make others follow them and accept them as leaders.
That such people should actually rule he regards as right and proper. In this
he seems to be inclining to fatalism, for there is something ineluctable about
these differences fixed by “nature”. This is not altogether consistent with his
general view of reason. At other times, however, he maintains that all men are
equally endowed with reason, and on this ground argues against the conception
of God sending prophets, since these give knowledge to some people and not to
others. This is implicitly an attack on the existing Islamic basis of society.

In
general, ar-Razi’s version of Platonism becomes a justification for the kind of
life he was leading, a life of intellectual, mainly scientific, pursuits apart
from the main stream of society. His philosophy enabled him to think and feel
that he was doing something significant. He was allowing the highest or
rational part of him to live its proper life. To put it in another way, the aim
of human life is to become as like God as possible; God is all-knowing,
all-just and all-merciful; and so man must endeavour to grow in knowledge,
justice and mercy.15 Knowledge, we observe, comes first. From our vantage point
of over ten centuries later we can see that ar-Razi was indeed playing a most
important part in the life of Islamic society, but his theory did not account
for all he was in fact achieving, nor was he himself aware of its full
importance.

(b) Al-Kindi

The most distinctive and most
important line in Islamic philosophy-to be roughly described as Neoplatonism on
a basis of Aristotelian logic-begins with al-Kindi (d. 866) and leads on to
al-Farabi and Avicenna. Al-Kindi’s thought has many similarities with that of
ar-Razi. He considers it one of the functions of reason, or rather of the soul,
to control the passions; and he emphasizes the distinction between the
transient things which are the objects of the passions or sensuous desires, and
the lasting good which is the object of rational desire. On the other hand, his
conception of the soul (nafs) is more
developed and more Aristotelian than that of ar-Razi. Among the points he makes
in his Essay on the Soul are that it
restrains anger and desire, that it persists after death, that when it is
purified it has true knowledge of things, and that its true habitation is in
the higher supernal world (‘alam
ar-rububiyya).16This
is still not unlike ar-Razi; but his Essay
on the Reason isexplicitly
Aristotelian and leads on to al-Farabi’s fuller work with the same title.17 The
conception of emanation (fayd) frequently
occurs; and God is spoken of as the only true agent, the only one who acts upon
others but is not himself acted upon.18

The relation of these ideas to
their social context is not obvious so long as we look only at al-Kindi, but it
becomes apparent when we notice how al-Farabi treated them. What is remarkable
in al-Kindi is the absence of any sense of conflict or tension between
philosophy and the Islamic sciences. Unlike ar-Razi, who criticized the
conception of prophethood, al-Kindi always speaks as a good Muslim. He asserts
that the knowledge brought by truthful prophets is identical with the results
of “first philosophy” or metaphysics; and he interprets the Qur’an in terms of
the Greek scientific world-view.19 On the practical side, he holds that the
soul which has been illuminated is entrusted by God with the conduct of
political affairs. 20 In all this al-Kindi probably reflects the political
situation from about 820 to 850, when many of the highest posts were held by
men of Me tazilite views and when the caliphs also had leanings in this
direction. The Mu tazilites were Islamic theologians with a moderate knowledge
of Greek philosophy. Thus the caliphate was in fact being administered by a
group of intellectuals of whom al-Kindi could approve. He himself was much more
fully acquainted with Greek learning and less interested in theology and less
involved in politics. This seems to explain why his works show no awareness of
the underlying tensions between philosophers and scholar-jurists.

(c) Al--Farabi

The political implications in the
Islamic world of the Neoplatonic conception of emanation become clear in the
thought of al-Farabi (d. 950), who has left several works on politics.
According to this concept the universe is hierarchical in the sense that at its
summit is the most perfect being, the being that most truly is, and that from
this being proceed less perfect beings and from these a lower grade of being
until the lowest of all is reached. In the same way al-Farabi regards the city
or civilized community as hierarchical. At the summit is the head or leader (ra’is). Then come the leaders of second
rank, then those of the third, until the lowest rank is reached consisting of
those who follow others but do not themselves lead any others. The supreme
leader is he who leads or commands or controls others, but is not himself led
or commanded or controlled by others.

There are various points to be
noticed about this conception of the state. Firstly, the qualities which mark
out the leader are not purely rational or intellectual. Al-Farabi has a long
list of the qualities required by the supreme leader, and they include moral
excellences and gifts of personality. One is reminded of ar-Razi’s view that
some men are naturally marked out to be leaders. By thus widening the
conception of reason al-Farabi brings his theory close to the political facts
of his time, though, as we shall see, he regards his conception of the state as
an ideal seldom to be realized. Secondly, al-Farabi’s account of the state is
not far removed from the old ideas of autocratic sovereignty associated with
the east. The supreme leader is the source of the whole life of the state. This
fits exactly some of the early conceptions of the divine kingship in the Middle
East 21It also fits the
contemporary practice.

“The grades of the people of the
city in leadership or service are higher or lower according to their natural
disposition and upbringing. The first leader grades the group; and every man in
every group is in the grade of which he is worthy, either of service or of
leadership. …The leader, after
assigning these grades, when he wants something different, can make fresh
ordinances....” 22

This activity of the first leader is exactly that of the
caliph. In the ‘Abbasid state (as contrasted with the Umayyad) inherited
nobility counted for little, whether it was that of the pre-Islamic Arab
aristocracy or that of the Islamic families ennobled by the stipend system and
similar measures. The ‘Abbasid court consisted of men who had been given
positions by the caliph for their own merits and usefulness (even if some were
also sons of courtiers), and they could be removed from their positions just as
easily as they could be placed in them. They were the caliph’s creations.

In all this al-Farabi’s views are
close to those of the Shiites, who also emphasize the leader. Yet there is a
difference, for the leader sought by the Shiites was one with charismata which
were independent of any personal effort of his and which placed him in a
category above ordinary men. It is possible to take al-Farabi’s views in a
Shi‘ite sense, but it is not necessary to do so, and therefore it would be
wrong to infer from his conception of the state that be had Shi‘ite leanings.23

The idea, then, of the emanation
of all being from the supreme Being, apart from its attractiveness as a
harmonious world-view embracing all the science of the day, appealed to the
deep-seated tradition of autocratic rule and the ordinary (educated) man’s
sense of being dependent on some one above him. Al-Farabi, however, modifies
strict logic to make his thought accord better with the historical situation of
his day. The supreme leader is described as a prophet-philosopher.24

“When
that occurs (the inherence of the active reason in a man) in both parts of his
rational faculty, speculative and practical, and then in his imaginative
faculty, that man is the one to whom revelation is given, and it is God who
reveals to him by means of the active reason; what flows (or emanates) from God
to the active reason, the active reason pours into his passive reason by means
of the acquired reason, and then into his imaginative faculty. By what is
poured into his passive reason he becomes wise, a philosopher, altogether
prudent; by what is poured into his imaginative faculty, he becomes a prophet,
warning about what will be, and announcing the particulars which now are....
Such a man is in the most perfect grade of humanity, and in the highest degree
of happiness....”

One difficulty
caused by thus making the supreme leader a prophet is that, according to the
standard Sunnite view, there has been no prophet in the Islamic state since
Muhammad. Al-Farabi has therefore to justify the following of Muhammad’s
example although he has been long dead. After the above description of the
“first leader” or prophet-philosopher and a list of thirteen qualities he ought
to have, there comes an account of the “second leader” who “follows” the
first.25 This is not a second-in-command but a successor. The Arabic word
translated “follow”, yakhlufu, has
the connotation of following as a deputy, vicegerent or replacement, that is,
as a caliph, khalifa. This successor
has to have six qualities. He must be wise (that is, a philosopher); he must
know and remember and follow the revealed laws, customs and manner of life (sharu’i’, sunan, siyar) established for
the state by the “first ones”; he must be good at deducing new applications for
their principles; he must be good at devising experimental ways of dealing with
entirely new situations; he must be good at persuading people to accept his
policies; he must be able to endure the hardships of war. Al-Farabi then
continues:

“If there is no one man in whom all these conditions are
fulfilled but if there are two, one with wisdom (philosophy), and the other
with the remaining qualities, then these two should be leaders in this city. If
the qualities are distributed among a group, so that one has wisdom, another
the second quality, another the third, and so on, and if the men are mutually
suitable, they should be the superior leaders. When it happens at some time
that wisdom (philosophy) is not a part of the leadership .. . the virtuous city
remains without a king....”

This is an attempt to bring the
description of the ideal state within measurable distance of the actual state.
One important point to notice is that in all these discussions there is
complete acceptance of the Islamic basis of the state. The supreme leader has
to be portrayed with the features of the prophet Muhammad. Even for a
philosopher like al-Farabi there is no conceivable alternative to the existing
Islamic state. What he does tryto maintain is that the philosophers
should have a say in the running of the state comparable to that of the
scholar-jurists. The second and third qualities of the “second leader” seem to
be meant to be those of the Traditionists and scholar-jurists; and the
suggestion is that, when the qualities are divided out, the bearers of each
quality are approximately equal. In so far as philosophers had a position at
court (or in the civilservice) and were able to influence the
ruler (central or provincial) by their advice, there was some truth in this
claim for the philosophers; but on the whole their influence must have been
decreasing and that of the scholar-jurists increasing.

While this conclusion is to be
drawn from the passage quoted above, another passage shows that al-Farabi
regarded the work of the philosopher as more fundamental than that of the scholar-jurist. 26 Knowledge is required by the
citizens of the virtuous state, but this may be of two kinds, either
“conceiving”, “rational conception”, or “imaging”, “imaginative understanding”.
Most men are unable to have a rational conception of what as citizens they need
to know, such as the ultimate principles of existing things and their
hierarchical order, the nature of happiness and of supreme leadership in the
state, and the particular acts conducive to happiness. For such men the higher
powers produce symbols and images by means of the prophets, and these symbols
and images may vary from people to people and religion to religion, some being
better than others, but the things themselves are the same for all. Here
al-Farabi is trying to exalt the philosopher, who handles absolute truth, above
the scholar-jurist, whose material has only relative truth. Is this perhaps
because he realizes that the scholar-jurists have more actual influence than
the philosophers?

Altogether al-Farabi is a
fascinating author on the subject of politics. He fully accepts the Islamic
state, but interprets it in Neoplatonic terms. He tries hard to make a place in
his scheme for the scholar-jurists, and in some passages succeeds; but at other
times he is unable to conceal his essential belief that the real successors of
the Platonic intellectuals are the philosophers in the Greek tradition.

(d) Avicenna

The physician and philosopher
Avicenna or Ibn-Sina (d. 1037) worked out a philosophical system on similar
lines to al-Farabi, to whose books he acknowledged his indebtedness. He is
generally reckoned the more profound philosopher of the two. Among the
similarities which specially concern the present study are the full acceptance
of the Islamic state system and the framing of a theory of prophecy in terms of
Neoplatonic epistemology. Since his epistemology differs slightly from that of
his predecessor, it is only natural that there are some small differences in
the theory of prophecy. He also takes the view that for ordinary people, who
are mostly incapable of philosophic thinking, religion must be expressed in
symbolic form.

He differs from al-Farabi,
however, in various ways. In general he has far less to say about politics. He
apparently never discusses the question of “second leaders”, but instead
regards it as part of the office of the prophet to make provision for the
maintenance of his religious and social system after his death. On the whole,
the position of the prophet is enhanced. Prophets are a rare phenomenon.
Prophetic apprehension of truth, though it may come about instantaneously, is
not authority-based (taqlidi)but rational (‘aqli).27
The work of the prophet, too, is more fundamental than that of the philosopher,
since it is absolutely essential for the welfare of the state. Only the
formulations of the prophet give ordinary people the knowledge requisite if the
state is to prosper. In so far as the philosophers’ formulations are
comprehensible only to the few, the philosophers would seem to be less
useful.28

The differences between Avicenna
and al-Farabi may be linked up with certain differences in their historical
situations. Al-Farabi had died’ in 910, whereas Avicenna’s life stretched from
980 to 1037. In 969 the Fatimids from Tunisia had conquered Egypt, and soon
afterwards founded Cairo to be their capital. They claimed to be the rightful
caliphs or leaders of the whole community of Muslims, and without delay began
to send out emissaries eastwards to work for the overthrow of the ’Abbasid
caliphate by the dissemination of Fatimid-Isma’ilite propaganda. This
propaganda doubtless also threatened the autonomous states subordinate to the
caliphate. Even the Shiites in the ’Abbasid domains (including the Buwayhid
sultans in Baghdad) would be threatened, since practically none of them
accepted the

Isma’ilite form of Shi ‘ism. Now much of al-Farabi’s
political philosophy, even if he himself was not a Shiite, was capable of being
used to justify Shi‘ite and indeed Fatimid policies. He tended to place the
emphasis on the actual leader or ruler of the state in the present. Avicenna,
on the other hand, says nothing about the flow of divine wisdom into and
through the actual ruler. His emphasis is on the founding of the Islamic
religion and community by Muhammad nearly four centuries earlier. This is much
more of a Sunnite position, and not unlike that adopted by al-Ghazali towards
the Isma’ilites.

Another fact to be remembered
about Avicenna is that he had a prominent place at various minor courts in the
east of the caliphate, such as Bukhara, Gurganj, Hamadhan and Isphan, sometimes
even being vizier or chief minister. Thus he had as much political power as he
wanted, and sometimes refused appointments. His relation to the governments under
which he served is not unlike that of the Mu’tazilites of Baghdad in the period
round about the caliphate of al-Ma’mun (813-833). It is therefore significant
that both he and the Mut’tazilites should think that their interpretation of
Islam in terms of Greek thought was a genuine account of traditional Islam.
(Avicenna’s account, of course, was much more philosophical than that of the
Mu‘tazilites.) In so far as they, philosophically minded men, had more
political influence than the scholar-jurists, they were able to present their
philosophical interpretation of Islam as the standard interpretation. There was
no need to exaggerate the importance of philosophy because there was no need to
seek greater political influence for philosophically-minded men.

Avicenna was also attracted to
mysticism. What is the explanation of this? Can it in any way be regarded as a
reaction to political impotence? He was not altogether impotent, but he lived
in a very disturbed period and may well have felt that any good work a man
might do was liable to be swept away by a sudden change in the current of
fortune. In his Autobiography he
tells how he had just managed to reach a point from which he could have
approached Qabus, the ruler of Gurgan and Tabaristan,
when the latter was taken prisoner and died; he would doubtless have proved an
enlightened patron. Avicenna must also have felt that little of lasting
importance could be achieved by political action. He has therefore no romantic
hopes of a reform of the existing state system by statesmen, however
philosophical. Instead he turns to the cultivation of the inner life. He
sometimes speaks about three stages, those of the ascetic, the worshipper and
the “gnostic” (zahid, ‘abid, ‘arif ), and
describes the last stage in detail.29 This was clearly an important part of his
own experience. It may have been in part an expression of his despair of
historical achievement, but much more it seems to spring from a realization
that the significance of life is to be found beyond history.

(e) Abu-Sulayman al
Mantiqi as-Sajistani

A
contrary reaction to that of Avicenna is possibly shown by Abu-Sulayman of
Sijistan (d. 1001), known as “the logician”. The explanation may lie in the
fact that he and most of the coterie which met in his house were comparatively
un-influential politically. An account has been preserved of a meeting after
the death of the Buwayhid sultan ‘Adud-ad-Dawla in 983, when they emulated the
ten philosophers who made epigrams on the death of Alexander.30 Abu-Sulayman
opened with a severe criticism of the deceased ruler: “This person weighed the
world in an improper scale, and assigned it an undue price. It is enough that
seeking profit in the world he lost his soul.” After the others had spoken he
quoted from the official Friday sermon when the death was announced:

“What hast thou accomplished with thy goods and slaves
and retainers and army, with thy stored wealth and keen wit? Why didst thou not
make a friend of Him who set thee on the throne, and bestow all on Him? .. . He
knew thy weakness who designed thy fall, and they little knew thee who thought
thee mighty! Nay, He made thee king who ruined thee with sovereignty, and He
dethroned thee who designed thy doom! Truly thou art a warning to all that will
be warned, and a sign to all that have eyes to see!”

Now
‘Adud-ad-Dawla is generally reckoned a strong and successful ruler by modern
historians, though he was not able to prevent his family from quarrelling after
his death about the succession; and the bitterness of the criticism is
surprising. It is reminiscent of some earlier criticisms of the caliphs by
scholar-jurists. What seems most likely is that Abu-Sulayman and his friends,
feeling that their merits were not given sufficient public recognition, were
withdrawing into themselves, and at the same time asserting the superiority of
their philosophical way of life.

3 AL-GHAZALI’S PERIOD OF SCEPTICISM

After this examination of the progress of philosophy in
the Islamic world, it is possible to appreciate better al-Ghazali’s description
of the period of scepticism through which he passed. It is convenient to begin
with an abbreviated version of what he says in his autobiographical work Deliverance from Error.31He begins by saying to a “brother in
religion” that he will try to tell him what he has found in his quest for
truth, and explains how from his earliest youth he tried to have a genuine
understanding of the various sects and religious movements with which he came
in contact, and how he was puzzled by the fact that men appear to become Jews
or Christians or Muslims because of environmental influences. He wondered how
the beliefs acquired from parents and teachers could be tested for their truth,
and whether there was a natural religion prior to these environmental
influences.

“I said to
myself, I am seeking knowledge of what things really are, so I must know what
knowledge is. I saw that certain knowledge must exclude all doubt and the
possibility of error, indeed even the supposition of this. The person who
performs miracles should not be able to shake one’s conviction of the truth of
such knowledge. For example, if someone says, ‘Three is greater than ten, and
the proof is that I shall turn this rod into a serpent’, and if he actually
does it in my presence, I still do not doubt my knowledge, but only wonder how
he achieved the transformation. From such considerations I realized that only
where I have an unshakable conviction of this kind is my knowledge certain
knowledge.

“When I examined my
knowledge, I found that none of it was certain except matters of
sense-perception and necessary truths. It further occurred to me, however, that
my present trust in sense-perception and necessary truths was perhaps no better
founded than my previous trust in propositions accepted from parents and
teachers. So I earnestly set about making myself doubt sense perception and
necessary truths. With regard to sense perception I noticed that the sense of
sight tells me that the shadow cast by the gnomon of a sundial is motionless;
but later observation and reflection shows that it moves, and that it does so
not by jerks but by a constant steady motion. This sense also tells me that the
sun is the size of a coin but astronomical proofs show that it is larger than
the earth. Thus sense makes certain judgements, and then reason comes and
judges that they are false.

“I said to myself, ‘Since my
trust in sense-perception has proved vain, perhaps all that is to be relied on
are rational propositions and first principles, such as that ten is more than
three, that negation and affirmation cannot both hold of anything, that a thing
cannot be both originated-in-time and eternal, both existent and non-existent,
necessary and impossible’. Then sense perception said, ‘Do you not expect that
your trust in rational propositions will fare like your trust in sense
perception? You used to trust in me, but judge Reason came and showed I was
false. Perhaps beyond rational apprehension there will be another judge; when
he appears he will show that reason is false. The fact that this supra-rational
apprehension has not appeared yet, does not show that it is impossible.’

“While my self was
hesitating about the reply to this, sense-perception increased its difficulties
by a reference to dreams, and said, In dreams you imagine things, and you
believe that they are real and genuine so long as you are in the dream-state;
but when you wake, you know that what you have been imagining has no basis in
reality. How are you sure of the real existence of all that you believe in your
waking state through sense or reason? It is true in relation to your present
state; but another state may come upon you, whose relation to your present
waking state is like the relation of that state to the dream state; in short,
your present state will be like a dream in relation to that state. If this
state comes, you will be certain that all your rational suppositions are
baseless imaginings. Perhaps this is the “state” of the Sufis in which they
claim that they see things which are not in accordance with rational
principles. Perhaps this state is death, and perhaps this life is a dream in
relation to the life to come, so that, when a man dies, things will become
apparent to him which are contrary to
what he now observes.’

“When these thoughts occurred to
me, I tried to find a remedy for them, but it was not easy. They could not be
disproved, for a proof has to be based on first principles, and here it was the
truth of first principles which was in question. The illness proved a difficult
one. It lasted almost two months. During this time I was a sceptic in fact,
though not in outward expression. Then God healed me from this disease. My self
was restored to a sound and balanced condition. The necessary truths of reason
became once again accepted and trusted in with complete certainty. That did not
come about through proof or argument, but by a light which God cast into my
breast; that light is the key to most knowledge. To suppose that the
understanding of profound truth rests upon marshalled arguments is to narrow
unduly the broad mercy of God. As Muhammad said, ‘God created the creatures in
darkness, and later sprinkled on them some of his light’. It is from this light
that deep understanding must be sought. That light floods out from the Divine
generosity at certain times, and one must be on the watch for it.

“The point of this narrative is
to show that one has gone to the utmost in seeking truth, when one stops short
of first principles. First principles are not to be sought, since they are
already present; and when what is present is sought, it becomes lost and
hidden. If a man only looks for what may properly be looked for, he cannot be
accused of falling short in the quest for truth.”

The first thing to be said in
considering this account of an attack of scepticism is that Deliverance from Error, though
autobiographical, is not strictly an autobiography. In particular, it cannot be
accepted as an accurate chronological record of events. Immediately after the
long passage which has just been paraphrased, al-Ghazali says he now regarded
the seekers after truth as divided into four groups, theologians, Batinites,
philosophers and Sufis; and he proceeded to study the views of each group
thoroughly in order to arrive at truth for himself. This must be a literary fiction
–a convenient framework for a schematic presentation of his conclusions. It
seems unlikely that the period of scepticism occurred at an early stage in his
theological studies. It seems certain that the fit of scepticism as he
describes it must have been preceded by some study of philosophy. It is also
clear that he had contacts with mysticism at a comparatively early period.32
Thus the plan of Deliverance from Error must
be regarded as schematic and not chronological. There is no reason, however, to
doubt that he had an actual experience such as he describes. What we cannot say
is that it came early in his career; it may well have been about the time of
his move to Baghdad in 1091, since we know that it was shortly after this that
he was engaged in the intensive study of philosophy. It is also probable that
his experience led him to a complete reappraisal of all the departments of his
knowledge.

That al-Ghazali’s scepticism had
a philosophical background is shown
by the fact that he links it up with a consideration of the nature of knowledge
and certainty. Some of his arguments bear a close resemblance to those used,
albeit for another purpose, by Miskawayh

(d. 1030).The latter speaks of the “judgement” of sense by reason, and among
the examples he includes that of the sun, which is known by rational proofs to
be a hundred and sixty odd times greater than the earth.33 It is not necessary
to maintain that al-Ghazali had read this particular passage, though he may
well have done so. This passage shows that one of the points made by al-Ghazali
was being discussed by philosophers in the Islamic world shortly before his
time. Apart from this specific evidence, the critique of knowledge is an aspect
of philosophy. The Platonic tradition, too, which was so strong in the
Arabic-writing philosophers, has suggestions of a sphere above reason, or at
least above ordinary mundane reason.34

The reason which al-Ghazali is
criticizing is primarily reason in its theological use. This is indicated by
the example he uses of a man trying to prove that three is more than ten by
performing a miracle. This was exactly the argument used by Islamic theology. A
prophet, according to the theologians, comes to his people with a message from
God, and says to them, “This is a message from God, and the proof that it is
from God is that such and such a miracle will happen”. The underlying idea is
that a miracle, since it involves a breach in the order of nature, can only be
produced by supernatural power. God produces breaches of the normal order to
substantiate the claims of genuine prophets sent by himself; but if anyone
falsely claims to have a message from God, it will not be substantiated by a
miracle.3S In other words, al-Ghazali’s scepticism must have been due in part
to a realization that the rational arguments at the foundation of Islamic
theology were not fully rational, but rested on many assumptions which could
not be rationally justified. Until this time al-Ghazali must have thought of
reason as being exemplified above all in theology, not philosophy. In his book The Aims of the Philosophers, in which
he gave an objective statement of their doctrines without criticism, he has a
revealing sentence to the effect that
“there is nothing in the conclusions of solid geometry and arithmetic which is
contrary to reason” .3b For a philosophically-minded person these would have been the most prominent
examples of the use of reason! What he means is that mathematical propositions
are not contrary to rational theology. Did this scepticism about reason in its
theological use also extend to it in its philosophical use? Whether it did so
or not during the two months’ crisis we cannot be sure, but it is not
impossible that his doubts were about reason in all its uses. The remarks at
the end of the passage quoted about looking only for what may properly be
looked for, suggest familiarity with the syllogism and with the fact that the
first premisses of a series of syllogisms cannot be syllogistically proved. In
due course, as we know from the passage about philosophy in Deliverance from Error, hecame to see that the metaphysical and theological aspects of
philosophy are far from satisfying the canons of strict demonstration set up by
the logicians. Thus, whatever the relative dating, his scepticism was
eventually turned against philosophy as well as theology.

A similar conclusion is reached
by another line of approach. The question may be asked whether there was ever a
time when al-Ghazali was tempted to abandon theology for philosophy. The
process of answering it will lead into a consideration of some of the more
profound implications of his scepticism.

The attraction of philosophy at
that period might be compared to that of science at the present time. One
outstanding difference was that, whereas our science has had to cut itself
adrift from much of the philosophical tradition of Europe, science in the
Islamic world was intimately associated with the most coherent philosophical
system of the day. Medicine and astronomy astrology were important in practical
life, and logical theory could not but appeal, even if only aesthetically, to
argumentative theologians. Thus there could be no question of abandoning these
sciences altogether. The dual system of education, however, tended to make men
either predominantly “Greek” in their outlook and adherents of philosophy or
else predominantly Islamic and largely ignorant of Greek learning. There was
little interaction between the two intellectual traditions. Up to this time
there had been only a partial infusion of Greek thought into Islamic
theology-that effected by the great Mu’tazilites about the time of al-Ma’ mun (regnabout 813-833). What was then
assimilated had been retained by the theologians, but they had done little to
come to terms with the much more fully developed philosophy of al-Farabi and
Avicenna. At most some of them, probably including al-Juwayni, had read a few
books.

The philosophers, on the other
hand, as we have seen, had completely accepted the Islamic state and given it a
place in their system. If we may trust al-Ghazali’s expositions of their
arguments, they frequently supported their statements by quotations from the
Qur’an; 7 and they were prepared to allow the scholar jurists a function as
mediators between the prophet and the ordinary people. 38 Even with all this,
however, there was a deep inner contradiction in their view. Avicenna went so
far as to say that the “transcendent faculty” (quwwa qudsiyya) of the prophet is “the highest of the grades of
the human faculties”; 39 and this seems to imply that the prophet is the summit
of human achievement. Yet the philosophical dogma of the supremacy of reason is
in conflict with this. If reason is supreme, how can the prophet rather than
the philosopher be the ideal man? If the prophet is supreme, how can
philosophical reason presume to sit in judgement on his words? As al-Ghazali
remarks, the philosopher has succumbed to false pride in his achievements in
“supposing that divine things can be absolutely subject to his thought and
imagination” 40 The contradiction is also seen in the fact that the whole
texture of the life of the state is governed by Islamic ideas. There are indeed
“Greek” ethical works in Arabic (such as that of Miskawayh), but the “Greek”
ethico-political system was far from providing a viable alternative to the
actual Islamic system.

Thus philosophical reason,
despite its claims, was not really an alternative to the corpus of Islamic
thought. Al-Ghazali, educated in the latter, cannot but have felt this.

These deeper reasons probably
influenced al-Ghazali most, but there were also more superficial ones. The
philosophers were a small coterie-almost of cranks and eccentrics, had it not
been that some were excellent physicians. They were divided among themselves.
Even if some had high offices in political administration, they had little
influence as a group. Many good Muslims looked on them with profound suspicion,
and even attacked reputable theologians for meddling with their books.4’ Only
with very strong motives could a theologian have defied this heritage of
suspicion and joined the ranks of the philosophers. All in all, it seems most
unlikely that al-Ghazali was ever seriously tempted to leave theology for
philosophy.

From all this it follows, if the
argument is sound, that at the root of al-Ghazali’s scepticism was a largely
unconscious disquiet with something in the contemporary condition of rational
theology. At most philosophy had contributed to increase the disquiet, and to
focus it on the imperfect rationality of theology. But there must have been
something in theology itself, or in the theologians, that first made it
possible for al-Ghazali to entertain such doubts. He had been trained to expect
a career as a scholar-jurist (that of a theologian was merely a branch of this general
career-he also wrote one or two books on law). His scepticism must therefore
mean that he had grave doubts about the career. Was it due to some weakness in
himself? Not unless too great honesty for coping with a wicked world is a
weakness. What happened later, however, and an analysis of his criticisms of
the scholar-jurists of his day, makes it clear that it was nothing personal
that made him a sceptic.

The full examination of this
matter belongs to a later chapter. Here some preliminary points may be noted.
Let it be assumed that the source of al-Ghazali’s disquiet was the failure in
some respects (not yet specified) of the scholar-jurists. As a zealous young
man connected with the movement of religious revival (in an external sense)
directed by Nizam-al-Mulk, he would wonder how this state of things could be
improved, and he would find the resources of the theological tradition very
meagre. His scepticism may be seen as a realization of the inability of reason
(or human planning) to set things right. It is in accordance with this
interpretation that the solution of the crisis, as; he describes it, is found
by no human effort but comes from “alight which God cast into my breast”. Man
does what he can, but realizes his inability to proceed, and then, as he pauses
baffled, something beyond himself sets his feet on a new path forward. Just
what the light was, al-Ghazali does not say. In another passage of Deliverance from Error, however, he says
that when he approached the study of Sufismhe already had a settled belief in God, prophethood and the Last Day.42
This is probably not the precise form in which the illumination ending his
scepticism came to him, but it may be the working out of that illumination.

There are various
other small indications that al-Ghazali’s disquiet was essentially a feeling
that his civilization was facing a crisis and the solution was neither to hand
nor obvious. When he had recovered from his scepticism, he began a quest for
truth by examining the teachings of the four main groups of “seekers for
truth”; he thereby implied that both he and they lacked some important aspect
of truth. The title of his book, Deliverance
from Error, has presumably a social as well as an individual reference, and
carries the implication that the community has somehow gone astray. And it
would not be out of place to note here that the title of his greatest book, The Revival of the Religious Sciences, presumes
some decadence or decay in these sciences. It is a major aim of this study to
try to discover in what this decadence consisted.

Perhaps enough has been said to
show how al-Ghazali was involved in the tensions of his time. The one under
consideration in this chapter is that between the two rival educational
systems, each trying to provide the ideational basis for the whole community.
Each had many good points and also some practical weaknesses. Ultimately what
was good in them was complementary, but each tended to claim to be
self-sufficient and to belittle or reject the contribution of its rival. Al-Ghazalidid not attempt to escape from this tension. On the contrary he
entered more fully into it, until he felt it deeply within himself. The period
of scepticism is the internal aspect of the process of resolving the external
tension by entering into it. By his voluntary act of accepting this and other
tensions into himself al-Ghazali was able to achieve a resolution of the
tensions which affected the ~ whole subsequent history of Islam.

4 “THE INCONSISTENCY OF THE
PHILOSOPHERS”

At the end of the previous
chapter al-Ghazali’s life-story was taken up to the point of his arrival in
Baghdad in July 1091. He then became immersed in his teaching duties, and seems
to have been a popular lecturer, for at one time (he tells us in Deliverance from Error) he had an
audience of three hundred students. We hear of him taking part in the usual
official functions 43 Yet he also found time to obtain a real grasp of the
Islamic version of Neoplatonic philosophy and the associated sciences. He did
this, too, merely by private reading without any personal contact with
philosophers. He was satisfied with his understanding of the subject “in less
than two years”, but in addition he spent “nearly a year” in reflection on it,
doubtless deciding what points in it could be accepted by a theologian and what
points had to be reected.44 It cannot have been till towards the end of the
period of reflection that he began to write the two books to be considered
here. The first, The Aims of the
Philosophers, was a factual and objective account of the doctrines of the
Islamic Neoplatonists, following Avicenna for the most part; the second
contained his criticisms of the philosophers and was entitled The Inconsistency of the Philosophers.45 One
manuscript has a note according to which the book was finished in January 1095;
and there is no good reason for rejecting this.46 If we allow six months for
the writing of the two books-which may be too much he must have finished his
time of reflecting on philosophy by July 1094. But, as he spent nearly three
years between studying and reflecting, the study must have begun soon after he
reached Baghdad in July 1091. That isto say, most of the four years he
spent at Baghdad as a professor was spent in either studying or writing about
philosophy. This does not, of course, exclude his having had some previous
acquaintance with philosophy, especially logic. What he aimed at acquiring in
his studies in Baghdad was a knowledge, especially of logic, physics and
metaphysics, comparable to that of the exponents of these sciences.

When The Inconsistency of the Philosophers is read in the light of what
was said in the previous section, the purpose is clear. As he himself puts it,
“the aim is to show your inability to make good your claims to knowledge of the
truth of things by apodeictic proofs, and to make you doubtful of your claims”
.47 In other words, he is pursuing the critique of reason which underlay his
bout of scepticism, and is trying to show that reason is not self-sufficient in
the field of metaphysics and is unable out of itself to produce a complete
world-view. Of the twenty theses for which al-Ghazali argues in the book, some
concern positive philosophical doctrines which he rejects, but seven consist in
proving that doctrines held by the philosophers (and sometimes also held by
al-Ghazali) cannot be demonstrated by reason. Reason by itself, he argues,
cannot prove that the world has a creator, that two gods are impossible, that
God is not a body, that He knows both others and Himself, and that the soul is
a self-subsistent entity. 48

In all this al-Ghazali was not
simply a sceptic, as has sometimes been alleged, though he frankly admits that
he is not arguing for any positive views, but has the negative aim of showing
that the philosophers are not free from inconsistency and self-contradiction 49
This limitation of aim is very understandable in his situation. He had come to
the conviction that reason is not self sufficient in either theology or
philosophy, but is in a sense subordinate to a “light from God” shed in the
heart which is somehow connected with the light given to men by prophetic
revelations. He had only begun, however, the arduous process of giving this
conviction a satisfactory intellectual expression. The negative aim of The Inconsistency of the Philosophers was
a necessary preparation for the erection of a building-a clearing of the
site-but the ultimate building was not yet planned in details.

The thirteen theses
where al-Ghazali rejects doctrines of the philosophers lead us into a different
realm. On three points-the assertion that the world is everlasting, the denial
that God knows particulars, and the denial of bodily resurrection-he adjudges
them to be infidels, outside the community of Islam, though on the other points
he regards them as merely heretical, that is, as holding views which are
mistaken but not so badly mistaken as to exclude from the community.51 The
thirteen points fall roughly into three groups.

The first and largest group is
that associated with the philosophers’ assertion that the world is everlasting,
in the sense of having no beginning. Al-Ghazali also rejects the further
assertions that the world has no end, that the several heavens are living
creatures and move by will, that they have a definite goal towards which they
move, that their souls know particulars, and that miracles, or breaches of the
course of nature, are impossible. He also accuses them of confusion in
describing the proceeding or emanating of the world from God as his creating it. 52 The last point shows what had
been happening. The philosophers had been adapting Neoplatonic cosmology to
Qur’anic conceptions by equating emanation with creation. This enabled them to
say that, though the world had no beginning in time, God was its ground from
whom it derived its existence, and in that sense its creator. All Qur’anic
references to creation were therefore to be interpreted in accordance with this
account.

The fundamental cleavage between
Sunnite Islam and the philosophers was probably that the Sunnites wanted to
regard ultimate reality as analogous to a human will, whereas the philosophers
conceived of it rather as an impersonal force. One of al-Ghazali’s complaints isthat the philosophers make the world come forth from God by some kind of
necessity.53 The same belief in impersonal necessity leads them to deny the
possibility of miracles. They make allowance for something analogous to will
and other human qualities by ascribing them to the different heavens; but
al-Ghazali has little difficulty in showing that this ismerely hypothetical.
He is, of course, no crude anthropomorphist. The question at issue between him
and the philosophers is whether the ground of all being is more adequately
described by human analogies or by analogies from natural forces.

The same opposition appears in
the second group. This consists in the philosophers’ assertion that God knows
only universals and not particulars, and in other assertions involving the
conception of God as bare simplicity, namely, that he has no attributes distinct
from his essence, that the distinction between genus and differentia does not
apply to him, and that he is bare existence without any quiddity or definite
character.54 Now the conception of God as absolute simplicity, with no special
relation to particulars, fits in well with the analogy of a natural force. The
force of gravity bears upon a body only in respect of the universal features of
weight or mass, not in respect of any particular features apart from these,
still less in respect of what makes a man a unique human person. The question
of God’s attributes had been earlier discussed between the main body of the
Sunnites and the sect of the Mu’tazilites. The latter, theologians influenced
by philosophy, were of a rationalistic turn of mind and denied that such
attributes as knowing, hearing, seeing, speaking, willing, had any distinct
existence within God’s essence. They seem to have been exalting rational
tidiness over the richness of religious experience; and in the long run it was
the religious experience of ordinary men that triumphed.

The third group consists of the
belief that there is no resurrection of bodies, but only a purely spiritual
resurrection of souls (with the corollary that there are no bodily pains and
pleasures in the future life), and the accompanying belief that souls are
naturally immortal. Here we are dealing not with two rival accounts of ultimate
reality but with two rival views of human nature. The philosophers held the
dualistic or “Greek” view, according to which man consists of soul and body,
but the essential man is the soul, and the body only the soul’s temporary
garment or, as some extremists put it, its tomb. The contrasting monistic or
“Semitic” viewis that, even if a distinction is allowed between body and soul,
the body is just as much the man as the soul.

In all these disputed matters there are seen to be
two main points of difference between al-Ghazali and the philosophers, namely,
the application of personal or impersonal analogies to God and the adoption of
a monistic or dualistic view of man. In a sense these are basic categories of
thought, which are taken for granted throughout civilizations. This is
especially true of the second. It is the way in which people think about man
throughout a culture, and is perhaps largely determined by which language they
use. It is “pre-religious” in the sense that the founder of a religion
expresses his new religious message in terms of the categories of thought
employed by the people he is addressing. Muhammad’s essential message could
presumably have been expressed in terms of a dualistic or of a monistic
anthropology; but, since the Arabs already thought monistically, he expressed.
his message in monistic terms, although the monistic conception of man was not
part of his message.

Although categories of thinking
such as we have here might be supposed to be objective, there is an element of
value about them, and it is proper to examine their social relevance. This is
not the place for a full examination of this matter, however, since it would
require a wide investigation of the whole earlier history of the Middle East
and perhaps further afield. In such an examination the kind of hypothesis to be
tested would be, for instance, that the tendency to conceive of ultimate
reality as analogous to natural forces is characteristic of agriculturalists,
who depend on the regularity of the seasons, whereas the tendency to use
personal analogies would be frequent among people like Arabian nomads who find
nature irregular and whose tribes prosper or decline according to the quality
of the human material. For the conceptions of man a hypothesis worth examining
would be that the monistic view of man belonged to people who accepted life and
were moderately satisfied with it, whereas the dualistic one found favour
rather among those who were, on the whole, dissatisfied.54a An alternative
would be that the monistic conception corresponded to emphasis on the
community, the dualistic to exaggeration of the importance of the individual at
the expense of the community.

These particular issues of the
eleventh-century caliphate are not altogether dead in the West of our own day.
Modern science has emphasized the extent of law in nature, so that we tend to
think of ultimate reality as impersonal and find it difficult to fit in the
personal, whether in its religious or in its secular form. In, our views of
man, too, both philosophy and religion, under Greek influence, have propagated
a dualistic outlook, but recently modern science, with psychology in the van here,
has been moving towards a monistic conception. These contemporary parallels may
help us to appreciate the problems confronting al-Ghazali.

The social context in which the
particular categories first appeared is one problem. Another somewhat different
problem is that of their transmission to the Muslims of the eleventh century,
including both the route of the transmission and the motives governing those
who adopted the categories. An important part was played by the conquests of
Alexander the Great, which were followed by the spread of Hellenistic culture
up to the borders of India. The Islamic philosophy we have been considering was
part of this Hellenistic culture, whose tide was now receding. The Qur’anic
categories, again, were taken over by the non-Arab Muslims of the caliphate
along with the Islamic religion. They seem to have been whole-heartedly
accepted, even although many of the new Muslims had had very different
categories previously. This is one of the remarkable features of the situation.
In the more strictly religious field, when new ideas are adopted along with a
new religion, there tends to be also some recrudescence of old ideas, perhaps
after an interval; an example is the idea of the charismatic leader among the
Shi‘ite Muslims, who give it a prominence unjustified by the Qur’an. In the
case of the monistic view of man, perhaps it was widely accepted because it was
assumed or taken for granted rather than explicitly taught-and so slipped in
unnoticed-and because it did not obviously thwart any deep religious
conviction.

Yet another question worth asking
is whether the adoption of the Qur’anic categories by the non-Arab Muslims has
had any independent influence on their outlook and attitudes. To superficial
observation Muslims certainly seem to be more conscious than Westerners of the
human aspect and to be much less impersonal in their dealings with human
beings; but this fact, if it is one, may be due not to these categories of
thought, but to their being closer to pre-industrial society.

However
fascinating such speculations may be, the primary purpose here is to consider
al-Ghazali’s response to the situation in which he found himself, where there
was strong tension between two sets of categories. Without hesitation he
accepts the Qur’anic and rejects the philosophical at the various points of
conflict which he mentions. He was following his teacher, al-Juwayni, in
adhering to “the religion of the old women”. He would not even allow the
philosophers to say, as al-Farabi had said, that the Qur’anic conceptions were
symbolic ones, put forward for the sake of ordinary men who could not
comprehend the more abstract language of philosophy.55 To allow this would have
been to allow a certain inferiority to be attached to the Qur’anic conceptions.
If revelation is ultimate, however, reason cannot be permitted to whittle away
its supremacy in this fashion. Yet despite this decision al-Ghazali had been
deeply influenced by his philosophical studies. His conception of man (and of
the soul) becomes more and more complex as he tries to combine something of
both conceptions. In general he was prepared to accept the findings of the
“Greek” sciences wherever they did not conflict with religion; for some parts
of them, such as the logical doctrine of the syllogism, he became an
enthusiast. In the next section we shall consider in detail how much philosophy
he was prepared to accept.

5. THE
INTRODUCTION OF LOGIC INTO THEOLOGY

The tension which al-Ghazali
found in his environment and into which he entered more fully by a deliberate
decision was due to the separation between two disciplines which really
belonged together, namely, the Islamic sciences of the scholar-jurists and the
“foreign” sciences of the philosophers. As already noted, there had been
remarkably little contact between the two sets of intellectuals. The
philosophers had fully accepted the existence of the Islamic state, founded by
a prophet statesman, but they had made no allowance in their systems for the
fact that in its details the life of the Islamic community depended on a
revelation or revealed-law (shari’a) and
that for the proper application of this revelation there had to be a special
class of interpreters of it, the scholar-jurists. The philosophers had also
made no effort to disseminate their sciences widely. They had had few living
contacts with the scholar jurists, they had presented a subject like logic in
an unnecessarily strange technical vocabulary which made it incomprehensible to
the average scholar-jurist, and they had strongly suggested that acceptance of
any part of their sciences included acceptance of the whole-and this whole
included some dubious theological views. The scholar-jurists, for their part,
had accepted that amount of Greek philosophy which had been assimilated by the
Mu’tazilites in the first half of the ninth century, but had paid no further
attention to it. So the two streams had gone their separate ways, and there was
now a heritage of suspicion to be overcome.

By the
eleventh century the scholar-jurists were realizing that there was much of
value in the “foreign” sciences. There are various references to individual
scholars reading some of the books of thephilosophers,56 but owing to the
widespread popular and scholarly suspicion of the philosophers it was difficult
for any scholarjurist to refer to any philosophical work in his writings. What
made it possible for al-Ghazali to break new ground here was doubtless the
support of the Seljuq government for the Ash’arites and its need for an
intellectual defence of the Sunnite position against Shiite, especially
Ismailite, propaganda. The extent of the connection between Isma’ilism and
philosophy is notclear,57 but a popular belief in such a connection, even if
mistaken, would be a sufficient justification for al-Ghazali to publish his
books on The Aims of the Philosophers and The Inconsistency of the Philosophers.

What in
effect al-Ghazali did was to examine the philosophical sciences to see how much
of them was valuable as an addition to the Islamic sciences and how much had to
be rejected. As a scholar-jurist he was interested in logical questions, since
legal discussions sometimes involved these;58 and for years he was very
enthusiastic about logic. His conclusions about the value of the philosophical
sciences as given in Deliverance from
Error,59 written about i rob, are the results of his mature reflection. He
regards the philosophical sciences as six in number, namely, mathematics,
logic, natural science, theology (or metaphysics), politics and ethics.

Mathematics is entirely true,
he holds, but the contemporary teaching of it (by the philosophers) is attended
by two drawbacks: the students of mathematics tend to think that all the
philosophers’ arguments are as cogent as their mathematical ones, and ignorant
opponents of mathematics from a religious standpoint bring religion in general
into disrepute. Logic is likewise true and not contrary to religion in any way,
but has the same two drawbacks as mathematics. Natural science or physics need
not in general be rejected from the standpoint of religion, but some
conclusions of the philosopher-physicists, as enumerated in The Inconsistency, are to be rejected.
In theology or metaphysics the philosophers differ from one another and have
many errors. These fall under twenty heads (as in The Inconsistency), of which three constitute unbelief and the rest
heresy. (This is not quite correct, since, as was noticed above, some of the
seventeen points consist not in false or objectionable doctrines, but in the
philosophers’ inability to prove rationally points that they claim to prove
thus.) Their discussion of politics
is merely utilitarian. Their ethics contains sound principles derived from
prophets and mystics, together with worthless ideas of their own, and is
therefore liable to mislead.

Al-Ghazali’s
attitude to the philosophers’ ethics is in strong contrast to his attitude to
their mathematics, logic and physics. There are traces, however, of a more
favourable attitude to philosophical ethics at an earlier period. At the end of
an exposition of Aristotelian logic (probably written in 1095) he said he was
about to write a complementary work on The
Criterion of Action.6o A work with this title has in fact been preserved,
some of which is almost certainly genuine, though other parts are definitely
not by al-Ghazali 6’ The genuine part would appear to be an attempt to develop
the Aristotelian conception of virtue as a mean, and would clearly be
complementary to the logical work. Soon after writing it, however-if indeed he
ever completed it to his satisfaction-he must have turned to a complete
rejection of the criterion of the mean as a scientific basis for ethics. The
condemnation of philosophical ethics in
Deliverance from Error is paralleled by the absence of references to The Criterion of Action in his own later
works62 Perhaps at the time of his realization that the strict demands of logic
were not fulfilled by philosophical theology, he came to see that the same was
true of ethics, and in ethics as in theology turned back to the Islamic
revelation.

His
rejection of ethics makes his extensive writing on logic all the more
significant. There are some seventy pages about it in The Aims of the Philosophers, two fuller expositions for serious
students, a more popular defence of it ostensibly directed against the
Batinites, and some slighter references. When this activity of composition is
connected with his remarks about the danger of innocent students thinking that
all the works of the philosophers were as carefully argued as their logical
works, it would seem that he aimed at making available for such students books
on logic which were not by philosophers but reached the same standard of
technical competence as the philosophers’ writings. The provision of an account
of the philosophical sciences not by a philosopher may also have been part of
his aim in writing The Aims of the
Philosophers. This would help to explain the curious procedure of writing a
separate book about the opponents’ views before criticizing them. He thus laid
himself open to the charge of disseminating knowledge of heretical views and
perhaps misleading the unwary; but he probably felt that it was worth taking
this risk in order that students following the normal curriculum might have a
chance of learning about logic and physics from a source independent of the philosophers.

The two
main logical works, The Standard for
Knowledge and The Touchstone of
Thinking, are intended for persons educated in the scholar-jurist
tradition. In the first he says he is writing to explain the methods of
reasoning and to keep the promise made in The
Inconsistency. There he had used the technical terms of the philosophers
without explanation, since he was writing primarily for philosophers; now he
wants to address those not familiar with philosophical books and to show them
what the terms mean. The same rules apply to arguments both in philosophical or
rational matters (‘aqliyyat) and in
legal matters (fiqhiyyat); and
therefore, to make the subject easier for scholar-jurists, he will take the
examples from their field 63

While
the purpose of these two works is readily understandable, that of The Just Balance, the work directed
against the Batinites, is obscure. What is puzzling is that much of the work
consists in somewhat forced interpretations of Qur’anic passages to find a
justification for the various types of syllogism. A quotation will illustrate
his method of procedure:

“The higher criterion is the criterion of Abraham (God bless
and preserve him) which he used against Nimrod; from it we learn this
criterion, yet by means of the Qur’an. Nimrod claimed divinity, and divinity
for him, as all agree, was an expression for having power over everything.
Abraham said, My God is God because he causes to live and to die, and has power
over that, and you have no power for that. I do cause to live and to die, he
replied, meaning that he caused to live through seed in intercourse and to die
through killing. Abraham realized that it was difficult to make him understand
the invalidity of this argument, and turned to what would be clearer for him.
‘He said, God brings the sun from the east, so do you bring it from the west;
the unbeliever was confounded’ (z.z58/26o). God then praised Abraham and said,
‘And that proof of ours We gave Abraham against his people’ (6. 83). From this
I came to see that the proof and demonstration was in what Abraham said and his
criterion. I reflected on the manner of his using it, as you might reflect on
the criterion of gold and silver. I saw that this proof had two bases, which
were married to one another; from the union is born a conclusion, the knowledge
gained. For the Qur’an is founded on omission and compression. The full form of
this criterion is to say: ‘Everyone who is capable of causing the sun to rise
is God-one base’; ‘My God is the (one) capable of causing it to rise’-the other
base; from the combination of the two it follows that ‘My god is God, and not
you, Nimrod’ “64 The passage concludes with an examination of the source of our
knowledge of the premisses.

Now it may be admitted that a syllogism is implicit in the verses of
the Qur’an, but why should it be necessary to argue about it like this? Why
should a man like al-Ghazali, capable of writing a full technical exposition of
Aristotelian logic, spend time on trivialities of this kind? Obviously because
some people who could not understand the technicalities needed to be assured
that logic was based on the Qur’ an. There were many people of this kind until
long after al-Ghazali, even people who rejected geometry.65 The heart of the
problem, however, is why a book against the Batinites should envisage readers
of this outlook and level of education, for the Batinites are usually said to
have had close connections with certain strands of the philosophical movement.
In trying to solve the problem it has to be remembered that the Batinite
propaganda had many faces, and tended to become all things to all men. It has
also to be remembered that a polemical work may be intended to confirm waverers
in one’s own ranks rather than to convince the opponents. All that can be done
here is to make the general statement that Batinite teaching must have been
proving attractive to simple-minded people loyal to the Qur’an.66

The achievement of al-Ghazali in his encounter with philosophy has
left a mark on the whole subsequent course of Islamic thought. He gave theology
a philosophical foundation, and also made possible an undue intellectualization
of it, though he is not to be blamed if later theologians have gone to excess
in their philosophizing. These points will be further considered in the last
chapter.

IV

TRUTH FROM THE CHARISMATIC LEADER

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Of the
four groups of people with whom al-Ghazali had to come to terms, the second to
be considered here is the one he calls the Ta’limites, the party of
“authoritative instruction”. This is a section or aspect of the political and
religious movement known as Isma’ilism; or, to be more precise, al-Ghazali
appears to apply the term Td limites to those adherents of the Ismailite
movement who laid special emphasis on the doctrine of ta’lim or “authoritative instruction”.
When he is referring to the movement in a more general way he usually speaks of
the Batinites, the people of the batin or
esoteric meaning. The movement has also several other names, but these properly
indicate distinct parts of it, since it is a highly complex phenomenon.

IV

TRUTH FROM THE CHARISMATIC LEADER

1. Isma‘lite Doctrine in its political setting

We are fortunate in having a
first hand account of how this movement appeared to an intelligent statesman a
year or two before al-Ghazali wrote his first refutation of it. This is
contained in The Book of Government, or Rules for Kings by the great
vizier Nizam-al-Mulk (1017-1092), who from 1071 was the virtual ruler of the
Seljuq domains. The first and slightly larger half of the book was written
about 1086 at the request of the sultan Malikshah. The second part he added
shortly before his death, and more than half of this part is devoted to the
Batinite heretics and revolutionaries, and their antecedents. This is evidence
of increasing anxiety over the Batinite movement, perhaps owing to the success
of the armed rising which resulted in the capture of Alamut in 1090. The
interesting point about Nizam-al-Muk’s account is that he regards the Batinite
or approximately Batinite a number of revolts in various parts of the east
between 750 and 975, and even the pre-Islamic Mazdakite movement which was
suppressed by the Sasanian ruler of the Persian empire about 530. It is worth
pausing for a moment to ask whether there is a justification regarding these
earlier movements as forerunners of Batinism of the late eleventh century.

Nizam-al-Mulk
would probably have justified his view by showing that all these movement were revolts
against established authority in the interests of a different kind of
authority, that they were supported by discontented groups among the ordinary
people and led by courtiers and administrators, and that they were hostile to
the Sunnite scholar-jurists and therefore to the principles of law and social
morality on which the Islamic state was based. He would probably have admitted
that there was no absolute identity of doctrine among them and practically no
direct influence of one on another. Yet from the standpoint of a politician not
interested in theological niceties there was a substantial identity, especially
in the fact that “the constant object of all is to overthrow Islam.” 1 It would
hardly be too much to say that this was a political movement masquerading as a
religious and philosophical one. In other words, though there were Ismai‘ilite
doctrines, the leaders of the movement do not seem to have been committed to
any definite doctrine, but rather to have manipulated the doctrines to serve their
political ends. Yet another way of putting this would to say that the movement
had no fixed ideational basis, but that the supreme leader had control of the
ideational basis and could modify it as he thought fit.

The
control of the thinking of the movement by the imam or supreme leader was
strengthened by the organization of the movement in a series of grades. 2 Only
a limited amount of truth was given to the lower grades, and that might be
adapted to the existing outlook of a person or local group. Thus to Muslims of
different sect and even to non-Muslims such as Zoroastrians, Batinis could be
made to seem not very different from what they already believed, and indeed a
fulfillment of it. Whereas there were discontented Sunnites, or Sunnites under
Isma‘ilite rule (as in Egypt), the lowest grade was not far from Sunnite Islam,
and care was taken to make a show of deriving Isma‘ilite teaching from the
Qur’an. It is doubtless because many of the common people who were adherents of
Batinism or likely to be influenced by it were also deeply attached to the
Qur’an that al-Ghazali (as noted at the end of the previous chapter) in writing
The Just Balance against the
Batinites had to claim that logical theory was derived from the Qur’an. Those
initiated into the higher grades of the movement, however-at least in some
periods and in some parts of the Islamic world-held philosophical views about
the equivalence of all religions which practically
placed them outside the community of Muslims. To what extent these leaders
seriously considered abandoning the Islamic community (or should we say
“abandoning an Islamic basis for the community”?) we shall probably never know
for certain. They were undoubtedly hostile to Islam as Nizam-al-Mulk conceived
it, and in their doctrines they had an instrument that could be used for its
destruction.

The flexibility in propaganda was something which
had developed gradually. Originally there had been a definite ideational basis,
since Ismailism was a branch of Shi’ism and had much in common with the other
branches. While it has sometimes been held that the earliest Shiites were Arabs
who supported ‘Ali for political reasons, careful study of the sources suggests
that from the first some of the followers of ‘Ali were seeking in him an embodiment
of the archetype or dynamic image of the charismatic leader.3 A survey of the
whole history of Sht”ism further suggests that, though it has had political
implications, it has always been primarily a religious movement, and that its
purely political ideas have never been sufficiently good as political ideas to
arouse the devotion that has been manifested. Politically it has stood for
autocracy, perhaps at times for a benevolent autocracy giving full
consideration to the interests of the lower classes; and for some adherents
this political appeal may have been uppermost. Essentially, however, what the
various branches of Shi ism have in common is not the political principle of
autocracy but the fundamentally religious quest for the charismatic leader. Some
of the phenomena where politics seem to predominate are to be interpreted as
the attempts of politicians, whether sincere or unscrupulous, to make use for
their political ends of this deep religious yearning.

The
Isma’ilite branch of Shi’ism seems to have separated from the main body about
765. It receives its name from recognizing as imam the previous imam’s son
Isma”il instead of another son Musa who was recognized by the main body. For
the next century and a half the history is obscure, and there are important
disagreements among historians. It became more associated with revolutionary
bodies and ideas than other branches of Shi ism. Shortly before goo there was a
resurgence of Isma ilism, as a result of which an Isma ilite dynasty known as
the Fatimids was established in Tunisia in qoq. In 969 this dynasty conquered
Egypt, and shortly afterwards founded Cairo as their capital. Because of their
Isma°ilite conception of the imam of the Muslim community the Fatimids, unlike
other powerful provincial dynasties, did not recognize the nominal suzerainty
of the’Abbasid caliphs. On the contrary, they themselves claimed to be the
rightful caliphs of the whole Islamic world, and they organized a propaganda
machine (da’wa) and sent agents
(sing. dd’i) throughout the ‘Abbasid
domains to disseminate their teachings and make contact with discontented and
dissident groups.

Because of the
flexibility already noted the Fatimid agents were very successful in making
contacts and gaining adherents. Possibly the reason for Nizam-alMulk not
mentioning any revolts after 975 is that any subsequent revolts were so clearly
connected with the Fatimids that no one would imagine they were separate.

One of the important groups
which acknowledged the Fatimid rulers as imams were the Qarmatians or
Carmathians of Bahrein, who ruled a small state on the Persian Gulf.4The
Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan as-Safa’) in Basra, a coterie of philosophers and
natural scientists with Neopythagorean leanings, also gave some degree of
allegiance to the Fatimids and probably made an important contribution to the
ideational basis 5

This
is, of course, not a complete account of the successes of the Fatimid
propagandists in the “Abbasid caliphate, but only an indication of the
complexity of the story. Another aspect of this complexity is revealed in the
attempt to discover the identity of the supporters of the movement. It is
commonly held that the Ismailites were the political party of the labouring and
artisan class in their struggle against the upper class. 6 There is probably
much truth in this view, but it is not easy to square it with some important
materials. It could perhaps be said to be implicit in Nizam-al-Mulk’s account
of the Batinites, but he only speaks of leaders who are courtiers and administrators.
In the Mustal’hiri, the book
dedicated to the caliph al-Mustaz’hir, al-Ghazalis peaks of eight
classes of persons who are attracted by the movement:? (1) people with a
tendency to deify men (such as ‘Ali); (2) Persian nationalists seeking to
recover autonomy; (3) men seeking power or vengeance; (4) people who think
themselves superior to the masses and seek something strange and unusual; (5)
superficial and dilettante members of philosophical coteries; (6) atheistic
philosophers and dualists; (7) people of Shi’ ite tendencies who are
sympathetic to Batinite teaching; (8) men dominated by their passions who find
the religious law irksome. Now some of these categories might include labourers
and artisans, but several exclude these. The Brethren of Purity come in the
sixth group, and some perhaps also in the fifth. The explanation and expansion
of all these statements would require a long investigation; but even without
expansion they illustrate the complexity of the movement.

In the
troubled years after the fall of the Buwayhid dynasty of Baghdad in 1015 the Fatimids achieved their most
successful penetration of the ‘Abbasid realm. A Turkish general was won over to
their cause after the fall of his Buwayhid masters, and was able to occupy
Baghdad in their name for nearly a year, so that it was they and not the
‘Abbasids who were mentioned in the Friday prayers.8 By about 1060, however,
the Seljuq sultan had so consolidated his power with Baghdad as capital that
there was little likelihood of a successful pro-Fatimid revolution. Egypt began
to suffer from internal troubles. The later leader of the Isma’ilite movement
in Persia, al-Hasan ibn-as-Sabbah, visited Egypt in 1078. Whether or not he was
badly treated by one faction, as is sometimes stated, he must have seen for
himself that the Fatimid government was losing its revolutionary fervour and,
besides having little enthusiasm, was no longer capable of making an effective
intervention in the east. On his return to Persia he spent several years
travelling about and organized a revolt that did not count on Fatimid help. By
1090 he was able to seize the fortress of Alamut in southern Persia; and on
October 14, 1092, one of his followers assassinated Nizam-al-Mulk--one of the
first instances of this activity which gets its English name from a nickname of
these Ismalilites, “hashish-men”, hashshjshin, corruptedto Assassins.

It is
primarily of these Persian (Khurasanian) Isma’ilites that al-Ghazali is
thinking when he speaks of Ta’limites, for his usual phrase is “the Batinites
of our time”; and in other sources al-Hasan is credited with being the author
ofthe “new teaching”which emphasized ta’lim
or authoritative instruction.,) (The subsequent doctrinal developments of
this branch of Isma’ilism, beginning with their adoption of Nizar as “hidden
imam” .110do not
concern a study of al-Ghazali, since they do not appear to have come to the
knowledge of the Sunnite world during his lifetime.) The doctrine of
authoritative instruction, namely, that in order to learn the truth about
anything you have to ask, and be instructed by, the infallible imam, is an
understandable development of earlier Shi’ism. The Fatimids also had the
principle (if reliance can be placed on a later document),” but probably placed
less emphasis on it.

The
essence of Shi’ism is belief in the imam or charismatic leader, which includes
the belief that salvation, or keeping to the straight path and avoiding error,
comes from following the imam, in contrast to the Sunnite belief that it comes
from being a member of the charismatic community. In keeping with the essential
belief, the imam came to be regarded as a source of truth or guidance for his
followers. This point was involved in the theological discussions in the ninth
century about the createdness of the Qur’an. By holding that the Qur’an was the
eternal and untreated Word of God men were insisting that the source of the
“beaten path” (sunna) or, as we might
say, the “way of life” of the community was supernatural, and were thereby
justifying Sunnite claims for the community. The Mu’tazilite and other
upholders of the opposing view that the Qur’an was created were interested in
placing more emphasis on the charismatic leader, that is, in political terms,
in increasing the powers of the ruler and his advisers and in decreasing those
of the scholar-jurists, the official exponents of the system of law based on
Qur’anic principles as expanded in Tradition.

Some Isma’ilite formulations speak of a parallelism of the imam and
the Qur’an; x but to the detached student this seems to be a sop to the Sunnite
feelings of the masses. The doctrine of authoritative instruction had as its
complement the conception of the “esoteric meaning” (batin). By this everything in the Qur’an (and in the Traditions
and religious institutions) had an esoteric meaning, which bore no necessary
resemblance to its plain or exoteric meaning, and which could only be learnt
from the imam. Thus heaven and hell could be particular men. In this way it was
possible to continue to pay lip-service to the Qur’an, and yet to ensure that
the Qur’an placed not the slightest check on the imam’s control of the
ideational basis of the community and therefore of its whole life. Al-Hasan
ibn-as-Sabbah seems to have greatly increased the emphasis on this aspect of
Isma’ilite teaching by insisting that truth could only be learned from the imam. Personal effort (Jtihad) in thinking and reasoning (ra’y, nalar), he argued, could not lead to truth, since their
exponents were always in disagreement. This was a direct attack on the
scholar-jurists. The promise of unity, too, must have had a strong appeal for
men who remembered the period of anarchy prior to the Seljuq conquest, and
probably looked on political and ideational disunity as the cause of their
sufferings.’3

The
nature of Isma’ilism may best be summarized by considering the relations
between the ruler or government and the intellectuals (the bearers of the
ideational foundation of a movement). In Sunnite Islam in its classical form
the ruler had no control at all over the ideational basis; he could not even
legislate in the strict sense, since all possible legislation was in principle
contained in the Qur’an and Traditions, and of these the intellectuals, the
scholar-jurists, were the guardians. In the Russian form of Marxism the ruler
(Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev) has become the controller of the ideational basis
of the state, since only he can give the “correct” interpretation of Marxist
doctrne to meet the needs of the contemporary situation.13& His control of
ideation, however, is limited by the existence of a corpus of documents-the
works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. In Isma’ilism even this last limitation has
been removed. Though there is a corpus of documents which has been
acknowledged, its efficacy as a check on the ruler has been destroyed by the
conception of the esoteric meaning. Thus the Isma’ilism of the Assassins stands
for complete autocracy, in which the whole life of the community is derived
from the ruler in much the same way as all existence emanates from the
Neoplatonic One.

2 THE INTELLECTUAL DEFENCE OF SUNNISM

Al-Ghazali’s
outlook was close to that of Nizam-al-Mulk. This may be presumed from his
association with the statesman, but it is also shown by passages in his
writings, such as his repetition of the dictum that “religion and government
are twin-brothers”.14 He must also have shared the older man’s concern about
the growth of Isma‘ilism, and that concern would not have been lessened by
Nizam-al-Mulk’s assassination in 1092. He therefore responded with alacrity to
the request of the young caliph al-Mustaz’hir that he should write a book in refutation of the doctrines of the
Ta’limites or Batinites. Al-Mustaz’hir came to the throne on February 7, 1094,
and the book was completed before al-Ghazali left Baghdad in November 1045; it
was probably written during 1095.15 This book is commonly known as the Mustaz’hiri. Al-Ghazali subsequently
wrote several other works directed in whole or in part against the Batinites. The Just Balance, as already noted,
justifies logical principles by reference to the Qur’an, and must have been
intended for relatively simple-minded believers. A manuscript of one of the
shorter works has been discovered recently,16 but the remainder seem to have
perished.

By
including the Ta’limites among the four groups of seekers whose works he
studies in his quest for truth (according to the account in Deliverance from Error), al-Ghazali
suggests that the doctrine had some attraction for him. This suggestion is not
to be pressed, however. Deliverance from
Error, as has already been seen, is not a strict autobiography. On general
grounds it seems unlikely that he was ever seriously attracted by the idea of
authoritative instruction. The whole Batinite movement was bitterly hostile to
the class of scholar-jurists to which he belonged (even if he also was critical
of the class). His skill in logic, too, must soon have shown him the weakness
of the Ta’limite position. His chief aim in studying Ta’limite doctrine seems
to have been to try to appreciate what it was in it which attracted men.

It is
perhaps appropriate also at this point to notice the suggestion that fear of
the Batinites and of assassination was the main motive of al-Ghazali’s actions
at this time.’7 This suggestion, too, is to be rejected. Since he had been
prominent as an opponent of the Batinites, he may have had some fear of
assassination; but it is almost certain that assassination had not come to be
thought characteristic of the Assassins in the Baghdad of 1095, since most of
the instances are later. Moreover, al-Ghazali says that it was hell he was
afraid of, not death.Es That indicates a sense that something was wrong with
the quality of his life. To be murdered by a Batinite, on the other hand, would
have been regarded by him as martyrdom and tending to ensure entrance to
paradise. So the arguments against the suggestion are strong; and in the
following chapters it will be shown that there is a satisfying alternative
explanation.

In the Mustaj’hiri al-Ghazali places
considerable emphasis on the doctrine of authoritative instruction and its
complements-over thirty folios out of just over a hundred-and in Deliverance from Errorit is the
main topic to be discussed in connection with the Ta’limites. The emphasis is
justified by the prominence given to the doctrine in the “new teaching” of
al-Hasan ibn-as-Sabbah. About the time the caliph asked him to write on this
subject, too, he had been very interested in logic, and had been studying it
hard and writing about it. He doubtless felt that this was a field in which he
could easily defeat his opponents, and perhaps impress their
philosophically-minded adherents. Most polemic, of course, though ostensibly
directed against opponents, is really intended to give support to members of
one’s own party who are in danger of being convinced by the opponent’s
arguments. Al-Ghazali’s argumentation here would fit in well with this
conception. It shows that, though they profess to abandon reasoning, they
cannot avoid surreptitiously making use of it, and that it is practically
impossible to consult the imam or his representative in every case; he does not
attack their esoteric doctrines. In other words, a large part of al-Ghazali’s
intellectual effort is to show the inconsistencies of the Ta’limites.

There
is an important difference between the MustaI’i
iri and Deliverance from Error. The
former, being commissioned by the caliph, naturally has a section proving that
he and not the Fatimid ruler in Cairo is the rightful caliph. This is along the
usual juristic lines, and in accordance with the utilitarian conception of the
imamate held by al-Ghazali.’9 By about IIo8, however, when he wrote Deliverance from Error, he had a deeper
appreciation of what lay behind the Batinite movement. He was no longer content
with destructive criticism of his opponents, but had realized that part of
their success was due to the fact that they satisfied, however imperfectly, the deep demand in men’s hearts for an
embodiment of the dynamic image of the charismatic leader. So he now insists
that Muslims have such a leader, but that he is Muhammad. He has his living
expositors (presumably the scholar-jurists are meant), just as the hidden imam
has his expositors, the accredited agents. In a sense he is thus carrying the
war into the enemy’s camp. Yet he has not altogether met the deep need in men’s
hearts. To put it in Islamic language, there is always a hope that a hidden
imam may reappear, but there is no hope of the return of Muhammad before the
Last Day. In other words, the desire for a leader is not fully satisfied. In so
far as that is a desire for a leader who is active in the present or who may be
active in the not-too-distant future it is not satisfied. Is it the failure of
Sunnism to satisfy such a desire that has prevented the reunion of Sunnism and
Shi ism?

It is
perhaps worth calling attention here to what al-Ghazali does not say. Though
the ‘Abbasid caliphs had originally claimed to have charismata, he does not
attempt to make them into imams of the Batinite type. Their position, now shorn
of nearly all real power, would have made this ludicrous. Neither does he
attempt to attribute any charismata to the scholar-jurists, apart from the
vague phrase about the expositors or preachers of Muhammad’s message, which
does not necessarily refer to them alone or even to them at all. Had he wanted’
he could have referred to the Tradition that the scholar-jurists were the heirs
of the prophets, but he took such a low view of the condition of the
scholar-jurists in his own day that he understandably passed them over. His
later thought, as we shall see, tended to the view that there was an elite who,
by treading the path of the mystics or Sufis, could obtain an insight into
divine truth comparable to that of the prophets. It is perhaps in parts of his
later works apparently unconnected with contemporary problems that we find his
real and effective answer to the challenge of Isma’ilism, which, even if it had
little effect on the ruling institution, enabled Islamic society to preserve
its characteristic structure and manner of life.

V
THE REAPPRAISAL OF THEOLOGY
INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Al-Ghazali
was by training a jurist and a theologian, and his attitude to these
disciplines must be taken to have had a central place in his development. There
is a tendency among Western scholars to regard Islamic theology as trivial
hair-splitting, and therefore to suppose that in his later period al-Ghazali
felt the same distaste for it that they feel. This is a complete failure to
appreciate what theology meant to him and to men in a similar position.

The
standpoint of this book may be roughly described as that of the sociology of
knowledge. The theologian is looked upon as a type of intellectual with an
important function to perform in the community. Firstly, it is his business to
formulate the objectives of the community and the view of the nature of reality
(including values) associated with these objectives. Secondly, he has to
systematize this ideational basis of the community by smoothing out
discrepancies which lead to tensions, either discrepancies originally present
or those due to novel circumstances; that is to say, in systematizing the
ideational basis of the community he is also adapting it to external changes
affecting the community. If we are to understand the place of al-Ghazali in
Islamic theology, we must have some idea of what had been achieved by earlier
theologians.

V
THE REAPPRAISAL OF THEOLOGY

1 THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF ISLAMIC THEOLOGY

THE first theological
developments in Islam came after the first wave of conquest had subsided. When
the excitement of advance was over, discontent began to appear, probably mainly
due to the feeling of insecurity consequent upon the revolutionary changes in
the way of life of the Arabs who formed the Muslim armies. This discontent led
to the assassination of the caliph ‘Uthman in 656. In the disturbed conditions
of the following period, when ‘Ali was caliph but not universally recognized,
there appeared the two contrasting sects of the Kharijites and the Shi’ites.

The
essential feature of the Kharijites was their emphasis on the dynamic idea or
image of the charismatic community,’ an idea which was implicit in the Qur’an
and in the life of the Muslim state. Originally, however, the Kharijites adopted
this idea in an unsuitable form. Anyone, they said, who committed a grave sin,
would be punished in Hell, and so belonged to the people of Hell; he was no
longer a believer or member of the Islamic community, and thus there was no sin
in killing him. In practice this meant that small groups of Kharijites,
regarding themselves as “saints” and all other men as enemies, revolted against
the government (which consisted in their eyes of “grave sinners”). One of the
important achievements of the theologians, especially those in Basra in the
last half century of Umayyad rule, was to transform this dynamic idea so that
it became applicable to the whole body of Muslims, scattered over what was now
a world empire. They made it possible for Muslims to regard themselves as
belonging to a community that was divinely constituted (and brought important
advantages to its members), yet which did not lose this character through the
sins of some members.

Meanwhile
another group of people, the Shiites, living in the same conditions, tried to
find security by emphasizing the dynamic image of the charismatic leader -the
divinely-sent and divinely-inspired leader who could guide them to safety
through the perils of the world.z There was not much in the Qur’an about such a
charismatic leader, but Muhammad himself was clearly one. The idea that was
developed, then, was that other members of his family shared in his
divinely-conferred qualities. Though later Shiites came to regard such
charismata as belonging only to descendants of Muhammad’s cousin and daughter,
‘Ali and Fatima, in the Umayyad period some men were prepared to allow that the
whole clan of Hashim shared in the charismata. The ‘Abbasid family made claims
embodying this conception, namely, that they were the heirs of the charismata,
and many no doubt believed their claims; but there were also many still
dissatisfied. The numbers and importance of Shiites and Shiite-sympathizers
during the first century of ‘Abbasid rule (75o-85o) is a problem that has not
been adequately studied. The two theological tendencies just described, the
Shi‘ite and what eventually became the Sunnite, appear to be linked up with
political factors, which I have tried to indicate provisionally by speaking of
the “autocratic” and “constitutionalist” blocs.3 This contrast and opposition
will appear repeatedly in the following pages.

The
Umayyad period is also noteworthy for raising the problem of human freedom or
responsibility and divine omnipotence or predestination. This again had a
political reference. Is a man
bound to accept an unjust government (such as many held the Umayyad dynasty to
be), or is he free to rebel against
it? For the Kharijites this problem was linked with their conception of the
nature of the community; could the community be a charismatic one if the ruler
was a wrongdoer? The discussion continued well into the ‘Abbasid period, by
which time the political situation was entirely different. The outstanding
protagonists of human freedom were the Mu’tazilites, who had adopted something
of the Greek intellectual outlook, and who linked thee question of man’s
freedom with that of God’s justice. In the end the great majority of Muslims,
however, firmly asserted God’s omnipotence. They allowed that man was free, to
a sufficient extent for him to be justly punished for his acts on the Last Day,
but in general they thought that he determined events only within narrow limits
and then subject to God’s will. Perhaps they felt that there was something
inevitable about the Islamic state, or perhaps they merely realized the
limitations of human planning. However that may be, the result was the general
acceptance by Muslims of this element from their Arabian heritage-the sense
that life is determined by forces beyond man’s control-and a general rejection
of the Greek conception of freedom.

By
about 8oo the conception of the Sunna had taken shape, and many Muslims were
speaking of themselves as “the people of the Sunna”. The Sunna may be described
as the divinely-appointed way of life or mores of the community. The conception
developed out of legal discussions about what was right or wrong according to
Islamic principles with regard to certain points. For a time men were content
to say that “the view of our school is so-and-so” or “the view of N (an important
member of the school) was so-and-so”. The practice grew up, however, of
supporting particular legal views by anecdotes about something that Muhammad
had said or done, such anecdotes being technically known as Traditions and
being accompanied by an isnad or list
of transmitters. After the work of ash-Shaffi (d. 820) Traditions became the
normal vehicle for legal and other views. Where there was no Tradition or only
an anecdote with an imperfect isnad, it
became necessary to complete the isnad, to
modify an existing Tradition, or even to invent a new one. All the inherited
wisdom of the Middle East, one might almost say, came to be incorporated in
Traditions. Muslim scholars realized that many Traditions were spurious, and
had elaborate rules for the critique of Traditions; but the aim of this
critique was not the establishing of objective truth in a modern sense, but, as
noted above (p. 10), the elimination of the eccentric views of the “lunatic
fringe” and the retention of views acceptable to the main body of Muslims. This
aim was more or less realized .4

The
conception that thus emerged was that of the Sunna (or “beaten path”) of the
Prophet, and this was taken to be a form of revelation, roughly on a level with
the Qur’an itself. This strengthened the belief that the Islamic community was
a charismatic one, since it had a fixed way of life that was God-inspired and
Godgiven. To the modem observer there may appear to be an element of “ideology”
or distortion in this conception. The Arab contribution to Islamic culture is
greatly exaggerated and that of other peoples neglected. Even if allowance is
made for the mysterious way in which the Arab element has moulded the whole,
there is still exaggeration; and this exaggeration of the Arab contribution
helps us to understand the protest against Arab superiority in the Shut ubite
movement.;

There was one part of the inherited culture of the Middle East which
could not be incorporated into Traditions, and that was philosophy or, to
describe it more accurately, the “scientific world-view” of the time.

Besides
the philosophical movement within Islam which has been discussed above (in
chapter III) there was in certain Traditionist circles an interest in
philosophical or rational theology, mostly called kalam (and its practitioners mutakallimun).
This perhaps began about 780. The men who engaged in the new discipline had
different views on various theological questions, but gradually some of the
more outstanding became marked off from the rest not merely by the adoption of
rational methods of argument but also by agreeing about certain dogmatic
positions. This group called themselves the Mu’tazila, and many Western
scholars, especially in the nineteenth century, found them the most congenial
of Islamic theological schools. As was seen above, they stood for free will
against predestination. They are also noted for insisting that the Qur’an was
created. These two points are sufficient to show that the Mu tazilites had
adopted not merely Greek methods of rational argument but also certain Greek
conceptions. Indeed, in more ways than can be mentioned here they were trying
to effect some reconciliation between revelation and reason. This was a
political matter, however, as well as an intellectual one. Reason and
philosophy, we saw, tended to be associated with the class of secretaries and
administrators. Revelation, on the other hand, had an obvious connection with
the rising class of Islamic intellectuals, the scholar-jurists or ulema, which
was being formed out of what under the Umayyads had been the “pious opposition”
and what later became the Traditionist movement. This latter class was the
bearer of the conception of the Sunna, both in general and in detail, and
naturally wanted the community to be based exclusively on the Qur’an and the
Sunna. They were the main members of what has been called the
“constitutionalist bloc”. Though the Mu’tazilites arose out of this class of
Islamic intellectuals their main aim seems

to have been to achieve a wide
synthesis or compromise, and some of them had distinct Shi‘ite sympathies.
Shi’ism is linked with reason and the “autocratic bloc”. It has been noticed
how the philosophy of al-Farabi lends itself to be the justification of a
thoroughgoing autocracy, in which the court and the administration are the
creatures of the ruler. This autocratic trend is in accordance with a deep
political tradition in the Middle East, but it seems to be provoked above all
by a religious need-the need for an embodiment of the archetype or dynamic
image of the charismatic leader. Man wanted to feel that he was being guided
through the troubles of the world by a leader with supernatural gifts. The
difficulty, however, was that none of the leaders actually acclaimed as having
supernatural powers was much of a success politically. Even the Fatimid dynasty
in Egypt, though its rule lasted in all for over two centuries, produced no
politically impressive results.

In this
situation it is to be counted another of the achievements of the theologians
that the main body of Muslims rejected the Mu’tazilite view that the Qur’an was
created and instead asserted as a dogma that it was the very Word or Speech of
God and untreated. This is not mere hair-splitting, for it is a reinforcement
of the view that the Islamic community is divinely constituted, that is, that
it has been given a definite form of life by God. The Qur’ an, the basic
scripture of the community, contains the verbal description of this form of
life, and also expresses simply and concretely the value-beliefs that are
presupposed by this form of life and the associated and equally presupposed
views about the ultimate nature of reality. This point will concern us further
in the next section, for the Mu’tazilite doctrine of the createdness of the
Qur’an was the basis of the Mihna or Inquisition (833-849), which was an
important event in the relationships of the scholar-jurists to the rulers.

The
discussions about the Qur’an led on to widerranging discussions about the
attributes of God. Inthe Qur’an many epithets were given to
God, such as “merciful”, “forgiving”, “knowing”. The question was raised
whether God had attributes of “mercy” and “knowledge” which were somehow
distinct from his essence. Those who held that the Qur’an was uncreated tended
to say that it was the Speech of God, and that therefore God had an attribute
of speech which, though an integral part of him, was also in some way distinct.
Seven attributes came to be recognized as essential: life, knowledge
(omniscience), power (omnipotence), will, hearing, seeing, speech. The
Mutazilites, on the other hand, while bound to accept the Quranic epithets as
epithets, denied that God had any attributes distinct from his essence. Thus,
where he knew, he did so by his essence and not by a separate attribute of knowledge.
It is difficult for the modern student to understand what is at stake here.
Perhaps it is merely a defence of the supernatural character of the Qur’an as
the Speech of God by insisting that there are other attributes which are also
in some sense distinct from his essence. Perhaps it is also intended to
reinforce the belief that God is not a bare unity, as reason tends to conceive
him, but that God or ultimate reality has a determinate character known by
revelation; in this it would be implied that this understanding of ultimate
reality is constitutive of the community.

Parallel with the discussions about God’s attributes (and the
continuation of the debates on other questions at issue between the Mutazilites
and the Sunnites) there was a movement, among those who held the usual Sunnite
position, for the acceptance of rational methods of argument. The important
figure is al-Ash’ari (d. 935), who was trained as a Mu tazilite but in 912 at
the age of forty abandoned Mutazilism for the Sunnism of the Traditionist
movement; at the same time, however, he defended, by the methods of the Mu
tazihtes, the doctrines he had come to hold, and thus inaugurated one of the
main schools of Islamic theology, the Ash’arite. Another similar school was
growing up in the east about the same time, the Maturidite. A large section of
the Traditionist movement still held aloof and continued to avoid “rational”
theology; and this section eventually became almost identical with the
adherents of the Hanbalite legal rite, and may therefore conveniently be
referred to as Hanbalites. The formation of these theological schools (the
Ash’arite and Maturidite) marks a stage in the incorporation of the “scientific
worldview” of the time into Islamic thought. It was still only a partial incorporation,
for it was largely dependent on what had been assimilated by the Mu’tazilites
in the time of al-Ma’mun (813-833). After that period the scholar jurists had
probably little access to Greek thought, for it was studied almost solely by
non-Muslims or in little secluded coteries (as was seen in chapter III). So
what was achieved, though important, was far from complete.

In the period between al-Ash’ari and al-Ghazali the Ash’arite and
Maturidite schools of theology perfected their techniques (while remaining on
the same plane, as it were) and extended them to the whole field of theological
discussion. There were certain changes in emphasis, and some new points came to
the fore, such as the distinction between miracle and magic. It was only with al-Ghazali,
however, as we have seen, that the advances in philosophy since al-Ma’mun were
taken into account by a theologian, so that it became possible for theology to
rise to a higher technical plane. While this point about the relation of
theology to Greek thought is tolerably clear, it is not clear whether the
theologians had succeeded in maintaining a living relation between theology and
the contemporary historical and political situation, where the caliph had lost
most of his power and retained only a nominal suzerainty. At the moment this
question need only be suggested, since it is more appropriate to discuss it
later.

Among
minor achievements of the theologians in the period up to 9$o were the defence
of Islam against various non-Muslim groups within the borders of the state. The
Mu’tazilites are known as upholders of Islam against the Manichaeanism found in
the secretary class and elsewhere, and also against Jews and Christians. In the
case of the latter the aim seems to have been to stop ordinary Muslims from
arguing with “the people of the Book”. This was secured by the doctrine of the
“corruption” (tahrif) of the Jewish
and Christian scriptures -the Bible; but it is noteworthy that the doctrine was
never precisely formulated. In its amoeba-like changes of form it served its
end, for, if a Muslim found one form of the doctrine did not suit a particular
argument, he could always shift to another .6

As a
whole these achievements of the theologians may be described as the formulation
of dogma; and a little reflection on the course of thought just described will
lead to a better understanding of the place of dogma in the life of a society.
In many of the great disputes the question at issue was whether the life of
this great community was to be governed by Muhammad’s vision of the nature of
human life and of the universe in which it has to be lived, or by some other.
In their details, however, the struggles seem to be remote from this, and to be
waged round unimportant abstractions. What does it matter to a great empire,
one asks, whether the Qur’an iscreated or uncreated? The answer is
that this point in itself perhaps does not matter, but that something is
involved in it which does matter. A study of polemics, whether political,
religious or any other, shows that the points at which battle is joined are not
necessarily the most important, but those at which an attacking side thinks it
has advantageous ground or a defending side thinks it can yield no further
without suffering complete defeat.

In the particular case mentioned, those who objected to the
importance attached to the Qur’an (and the Traditions) in the life of the
community doubtless thought that, in asserting the Qur’an was created, they had
a good point. The Qur’an had manifestly appeared at a certain moment (or rather
series of moments) in time, and by insisting on this they no doubt hoped to
weaken the case of those who thought that Qur’anic principles should control
the life of the state. The other side, however, feeling strongly that the Qur’an
was the supernatural basis of the community (and knowing that for some of them
their material livelihood was bound up with the general acceptance of this
point), decided to stand firm here and to insist that the Qur’an as God’s
speech was uncreated. The question had all sorts of ramifications. The
opponents could reply, “If you repeat the Qur’an, the sounds you make are not
eternal; if it is written, the paper and ink are not eternal”. This objection
could be met by making further distinctions, and these would lead to further
questions. Eventually, however, one side gets the better of the argument. The
vast majority go to this side, and the other side is left as a dwindling
minority. The majority formulates succinctly the point for which they have been
fighting, and it becomes a dogma. A dogma is thus an assertion which after long
argument is accepted by the main body of the community and which is felt to
safeguard something essential to the well-being of the community.

Dogma is the record of an agreement. The community does not want to
repeat the argument, at least not for a long time. Theoretically the
possibility of reopening the question cannot be excluded, but in practice it is not contemplated. Indeed, one
might doubt whether Islam would remain Islam if it changed its mind about the
uncreatedness of the Qur’an. Thus the assertion about which agreement is
reached is given a special status, and comes to have a measure of fixity. This
fixity gives stability to the life of the community. Provided there has been
adequate discussion before the dogma has been formulated, and provided
political pressure has not been used to gain the acceptance of a formula not
sincerely accepted by the majority, this fixity is most valuable. The great
civilizations of the past have nearly always had the security that comes from a
relatively fixed and stable ideational basis.

On the other hand, fixity can be
bad if it prevents adjustment of the ideational basis of the community to
changing circumstances. Much of the bad odour attached to “dogma” at the
present time is due to the fact that our Western Christian dogmas have been too
rigid to be easily modified to meet the bewilderingly rapid changes in our
circumstances. It must be noticed here, however, that the failure to become adapted
to new situations may not be due to faults in the dogmas themselves, for it is
usually possible to effect some re­finement in the conceptions. Most often the
difficulty is that the bearers of the dogmas feel that their privileged status
is being threatened and so are unwilling to make the modifications. Whether
something of this sort had happened to the Muslim intellectuals before
al-Ghazali is an important question that will have to be considered.

2 THEOLOGIANS AND GOVERNMENTS

To consider, as has just been
done, the contemporary relevance of the ideas of the theologians is not in
itself sufficient. It is also necessary, for an understanding of al-Ghazali’s
position, to look at the relations of the ruling institution or government to
the theologians, and more generally to the whole class of religious intel­lectuals.
Here again we stumble into a field which has not been much cultivated by
scholars; but from little patches here and there we obtain what we hope is a
reliable sample of the yield of the whole area.

During the Umayyad
period the class of religious in­tellectuals was only in process of formation.
In a few centres, such as Medina and Basra, devout men began to discuss
questions which presented themselves in the course of their practice of the Islamic
religion. At first, questions of conduct probably occupied most attention,
either the conduct of the rulers towards those whom they ruled or the conduct
of individual Muslims towards one another. Gradually some of these questions
were found to involve more strictly theological points; but even at the end of
the Umayyad period it could hardly be said that a “systematic” theology had
been formu­lated. The earliest theological views were those of oppo­nents of
the government, Kharijites and Shi’ites, but in the course of time theological
positions were worked out, notably that of the Murji’ites, which would most
naturally be associated with support of the Umayyad regime. The body of men,
mainly in Medina, who were interested in matters of conduct and an Islamic way
of life, are sometimes called the “pious opposition” be­cause, though not
active opponents of the Umayyads, they disapproved of their Arab rather than
Islamic out­look. It further appears that this “pious opposition” gave its
general support to the movement which brought about the replacement of the
Umayyads by the ‘Ab­basids, and that the ‘Abbasids in return gave some recog­nition
to the “Islamic law” which the devout scholars were in process of elaborating.
Among other things this recognition meant the appointment of judges by the
government from among the devout scholars.7

This
understanding between the government and the religious intellectuals was in
keeping with the Persian political tradition which the ‘Abbasids followed to a
great extent. There was a Persian saying that “religion and government are
twin-brothers”,8 and under the Sasanian empire the Zoroastrian clergy had
become almost a department of government. It is therefore not surprising that
soon after their coming to power in 750 the ‘Abbasids are found persecuting the
holders of religio-political views of which they disapproved. There was a
persecution of zindiqs from about 779 to 786, 9 and we hear of persons
of Shi‘ite sympathies being imprisoned during the reign of ar-Rashid (786-809).
10 Even under the Umayyads there had been some use of force against religious
sectaries, but the main reason seems to have been political rather than
theological.,, For the ‘Abbasid persecutions just mentioned there may have been
political reasons; for example, many of those executed or imprisoned as zindiqs
belonged to the secretary class which was opposed to the growing power of the
Muslim religious intellectuals. Yet there was also a tendency to regard a man’s
theological views, apart from any obvious political reference, as a matter of
which the government might properly take cognizance.

At this point it is pertinent to note that it is normal for a
government or ruler, whether autocratic or democratic, to support those views
(and the organized bodies of opinion holding them) which promise to gain the
greatest volume of support. The history of the Byzantine empire in the three or
four centuries after Constantine has numerous examples of attempts by the
ruling institution to get doctrinal compromises accepted which would
superficially unite opposing sectarian groups. This is a constant preoccupation
of rulers, and it constantly fails after a short period of trial. Serious
theological divergences spring from roots deep in a man’s constitution, and, if
a compromise does not satisfy the deep needs, men will sooner or later turn
from it. Theological compromises are worked out intellectually from existing,
partly contradictory, doctrinal formulations; but intellectual operations of
this kind take account only of what is explicit in the formulations, whereas
the formulations may be satisfactory only because of some elements which are
not explicit but implicit. If the compromise formula does not make allowance
for this implicit element, it will not satisfy those to whom at a deep level
the implicit element was important. Frequently the compromise formula satisfies
neither side.

These general considerations help one to understand a series of
events which mark an important stage in the relations between the religious
intellectuals and the government. The series of events is the Mihna or
Inquisition (833-849), during which government officials in certain important
centres were required to make public profession of their adherence to the
theological doctrine that the Qur’an was created. The opposing doctrine was
that the Qur’an was the untreated Speech of God. The government adopted this
policy on the advice of a group of theologians of the Mu’tazilite sect who had
become closely associated with it. Doubtless the government was attracted by
the doctrine because it looked the kind of doctrine which would bring harmony
between opposing political factions-between the constitutionalist bloc with the
Islamic intellectuals on the one hand and the autocratic bloc with the secretaries
on the other hand. The Mu’tazilites themselves were presumably looking for a
way of reconciling the conflicting claims of reason and revelation–a genuine
problem of the times with important practical consequences. But they did not go
far enough to satisfy the deep inner demand of the Shi‘ites for a charismatic
leader, and at the same time their concession to the Shi‘ites in depreciating
the place of the Qur’an alarmed those whose deep need was to belong to a
charismatic community, since in denying that the Qur’an was the eternal Speech
of God they seemed to be denying that the community was divinely instituted.

In the
course of the Inquisition most of the intellectuals who were required to make
public profession of the doctrine did so, whatever their real views. A few
refused, and of these some were put to death. The most important recusant was
Ahmad ibn-Hanbal (d. 855) who suffered in various ways but was not executed.
Perhaps the authorities were aware of the great admiration for him among the populace
of Baghdad. To later generations his successful passive resistance made him a
hero, and it may be because of this, as much as because of his eminence as a
jurist, that one of the four great Sunnite legal rites came to bear his name.
Yet his example, though it showed that deeply-held conviction could not be
changed by force, did not make his followers ready at all times to stand up for
their convictions against government pressure. On the contrary, though they may
occasionally have boldly maintained their convictions, the chief impression
they give is that they were men anxious to gain government support. They also
showed themselves quite unscrupulous in using the physical violence of mobs
against their theological opponents. 12

On the
long-term view the chief result of the Inquisition was to make it clear that
the government or ruling institution was stronger than the scholar-jurists. For
some time before this it had been the instinct of the more sensitive members of
this class or their predecessors to refuse all government appointments and all
gifts from the caliphs; some were prepared to act as judges but without any
financial emoluments. The wisdom of such an attitude was now apparent. So many
of the scholar-jurists must now have been financially dependent on the ruling
institution that they were unable as a body to resist pressure from it. Its
abandonment of the policy of the Inquisition was therefore presumably not due
to Ahmad ibn-Hanbal and the Baghdad mob, but to the failure of the policy to
win a sufficient volume of Shi‘ite support. The change of policy meant the end
of the political power of the Mu tazilites and the beginning of their decline.
When about 912 al-Ash’ari left them and began to use their methods of argument
to defend an essentially Hanbalite position, they ceased to be a significant
factor in the theological life of the Islamic world, though they continued to
exist for centuries. They may at times have suffered, along with certain
philosophical coteries, from the disapproval of the government.13

A
glimpse of the state of affairs about 922 is provided by Louis Massignon’s
study of the trial of al-Hallaj. 14 The political background of this trial was
the political struggle for the position of vizier, which was mainly a struggle
between two families, that of Ibn-al-Furat (855-924) and ‘Ali ibn-‘Isa
(859-945). Massignon describes the former as tending to an “absolutist”
position and having moderate Shi‘ite sympathies and the latter as being
“constitutional” and broadly Sunnite; that is to say, they represented what
were called above the “autocratic and constitutionalist blocs”. It is further
clear from Massignon’s study that the gadis or judges are mixed up in the
politics of the time. Indeed the family of ‘Ali ibn-’Isa is one of scholar-jurists
or religious intellectuals which has made its way into the class of
“secretaries” or administrators. His grandfather, Da’udibn ‘Ali (d. 884), was the founder of the Zahirite legal rite,
while an uncle, Muhammad ibn-Da’ud (d. 910), was vizier for a day in 908.
Numerous details show that the religious intellectuals are now powerless
against the vizier. It is their right to give legal opinions (fataws), but the vizier can choose
between conflicting opinions -and did so in respect of the condemnation of
al-Hallaj. One scholar-jurist, Ibn-‘Ata, a follower of al-Hallaj, who made a public statement approving
of the latter’s creed, was roughly handled at the bidding of the vizier and
beaten on the head with his own shoes until blood ran down his nostrils; whether
as a consequence of this or not, he died a few days later.

Careful
study of the condemnation of al-Hallaj seems to show that this was essentially
a political decision. Muhammad ibn-Da’ud was the author of a work which was
composed round an anthology of poems, and of which the first half dealt with
platonic love; this conception was absolutely opposed to the teaching of
al-Hallajabout love for God. 15
When the case of al-Hallaj was judicially considered during the first vizierate
of Ibn-al-Furat (about 909), Muhammad ibn-Da’ud, as head of the Zahirite legal
rite in succession to his father, gave a legal opinion (fatwa) condemning the doctrines of al-Hallaj. Behind this legal
opinion, however, there was the hostility of Imamite Shi‘ite party and their leader,
Abu-Sahl an-Nawbakhti. In the course of his preaching al-Hallaj had tried to
present his views to the Imamites as a development of their own. Probably many
of the rank and file were attracted to him. Perhaps Abu-Sahl, “with the
scepticism and the discernment of an old politician”, had for a time thought he
might prove a useful instrument. Eventually, however, Abu-Sahl and the other
Imamite leaders became bitterly hostile to him. He acquired followers among the
leading administrators, and gained a foothold at court, where the caliph had
already shown Shi‘ite sympathies. The Imamites must have been seriously alarmed
at the growth of this essentially Sunnite form of mysticism; its teaching that
any man might rise to sanctity and obtain supernatural charismata cut the root
from their doctrine that charismata were a special privilege of the ‘Alid line.
The Imamites, however, were unable to act directly against al-Hallaj, since no
Imamite jurist had any official authority and there was no subservient police force;
and it is therefore remarkable that they were able to obtain Sunnite legal
opinions condemning him. 16 The ultimate source of the condemnation of
al-Hallaj is thus the political danger to the Imamite party, the centre of the
“autocratic bloc”; but what made it practicable was the political weakness of
the Sunnite jurists and their readiness, where no clear principle was at stake,
to please the ruling institution.

By 945
there had been an important change in the political situation. The caliph had
lost most of his power and no longer appointed viziers who actually ruled. In
Baghdad the supreme authority was in the hands of a family of Persian
(Daylamite) war-lords, the Buwayhids (or Buyids), who had the title of “supreme
commander” (amir al-umara’).17The Buwayhids were Shiites and represented the “autocratic bloc”,
but they were not able to make the territories they ruled completely Shiite,
perhaps mainly because of the strong hold of Sunnism on the ordinary people.
The Sunnite scholar-jurists retained most of their influence in the restricted
field of law, but Shi‘ite jurists were officially recognized along with them.
Unfortunately this aspect of the Buwayhid period has not been fully studied,
and it is impossible to go into further detail about it. 18

While
the Buwayhids still retained control of Baghdad a powerful state was being
created in eastern Persia, Afghanistan and India by a war-lord of Turkish
descent, Mahmud of Ghazna (regnabat 998-1030).One or two small incidents are recorded which may be taken as
straws. At one point he summoned the Ash’arite theologian Ibn-Furak (d. 1015)
to Ghazna to reply to a charge of doctrinal error (in holding that Muhammad’s
prophethood did not continue after his death).19 On another occasion, after a
drive against the Batinites in Rayy, Mahmud appointed a reliable Sunnite
scholar, Abu-Hatim ibn-Khamush, as a kind
of censor to examine the theological opinions of newcomers who wanted to settle
in the town, before they were allowed to give public addresses.20 This marks a
turning of the tide again towards Sunnism, and the beginning of the support of
Turkish rulers for it.

The
resurgence of Sunnism in Baghdad and the lands dependent on it began about 1000
as Buwayhid power declined, and entered a new and decisive phase in 1055 when
another dynasty of Turkish war-lords, the Seljuqs, gained control of Baghdad.
At first, the influence of the Hanbalites was strongest, and under Tughril
Beg’s vizier, al-Kunduri, curses against the Ash’arites were added to those
against the Rafidites (Imamite Shiites) in the Friday prayers.21 The accession
to the throne (the emirate) of Alp-Arslan in 1063 led to a change of policy. In
his previous provincial governorship he had had as vizier the great
Nizam-al-Mulk, and the latter now became vizier of the whole empire and
remained so, with increasing power, until his death in toga. Nizamal-Mulk at
once had the cursing of the Ash’arites stopped, and began to implement a policy
of supporting and strengthening the Ash’arites against the other theological
and legal schools. Towards the end of 1065 he began to build a college at
Baghdad, which was opened in September 1067, and is known as the Nizamiyya.
This is the college to which al-Ghazali went as professor in rog1. Similar
colleges were also founded in other important cities of the empire. Thus
Ash’arite theology became the form of Islamic doctrine supported by the
government.

Details
have been preserved of the personal aspects of some of the theological disputes
of the time, and these throw some light on the general conditions. In 1058 the
wealthy and learned Traditionist al-Khatib al-Baghdadi had to leave the city
because of the difficulties made for him by the Hanbalites.22 The opening of
the Nizamiyya college in 1067 was the signal for fresh activity by the
Hanbalites against both the Ash’arites and the Mu’tazilites, whom they regarded
as equally dangerous, since both practised kalam
or rational theology. When in 1068 there was some question of the leading
Mu‘tazilite Abu-’Ali ibn-al-Walid lecturing at the Nizamiyya, one of the
Hanbalite leaders, the Sharif Abu-Ja‘far al-Hashimi, organized a demonstration
of protest which seems to have gained its end.23 About the same time it came to
light that one of the most promising young Hanbalites, Ibn-’Aqil,had been
receiving instruction from Mu‘tazilites, and a serious view was taken of this
by some of the leaders, notably the same Abu-Ja‘far al-Hashimi. The matter
aroused much public interest, and led to disturbances and minor riots, while
Ibn-’Aqil had to lie low. The pressure on him was such that eventually in 1072
he made a retractation which satisfied the Sharif Abu-Ja‘far. There has
recently been discovered and published the autograph diary of one of the lesser
Hanbalites, with numerous entries covering about a year from 1068 to 1068; and
this suggests that the Hanbalites were not so solidly against Ibn-’Aqil as had
previously been thought, and that the pressure on him was not due to an
official decision of the whole Hanbalite body but was mainly from the Sharif
Abu-Ja‘far and his friends among the Hanbalites.24

Another
series of incidents began with the visit to the Nizamiyya in 1067 of the
Ash’arite preacher, Abu-Nasr al-Qushayri (son of the well-known mystic
Abu-’lQasim al-Qushayri). The Hanbalites stirred up riots in which twenty
persons were killed. Once again the Sharif Abu-Ja‘far took a leading part in
the attack, perhaps with some encouragement from his cousin, the caliph
al-Muqtadi. The attacks were not confined to the preacher who was the original
cause of the trouble, but included the senior professor at the Nizamiyya,
Abu-Is’haq ash-Shirazi. It is significant that the latter wrote to complain to
Nizam-al-Mulk himself and to obtain his backing. The vizier did his best to
calm down the affair. He wrote pointing out how al-Ash’ari himself had shown
great respect for Ahmad ibn-Hanbal, and at the same time (perhaps at the
request of the caliph) he summoned Abu-Nasr al-Qushayri back to Khurasan-in any
case the visit to Baghdad had been incidental to making the pilgrimage, but the
scholars of the period were mobile, and he might have remained in Baghdad but
for the

storm.23

These
details help to give some idea of conditions in Baghdad in the latter half of
the eleventh century. Most prominent is the rivalry between the Hanbalites and
the Ash’arites, which is in no way reduced by the official support given to
both sides. It is also clear that an important section of the populace of
Baghdad is behind the Hanbalites and is ready to stage a riot when given any
encouragement. At the same time there are traces of serious differences within
the Hanbalites. In general the policy of Nizam-al-Mulk, as of all rulers, is to
remove disharmonies as far as possible; but, though his backing of the
Asharites was not unconditional, it doubtless added to the truculence of the
Hanbalites. Apparently both parties concentrated their attention on maintaining
and improving their position in Baghdad.

3 AL-GHAZALI’S CRITIQUE OF THE SCHOLAR-JURISTS

No one
can read through, or even rapidly peruse, the opening book of al-Ghazali’s Revival of the Religious Sciences without
being struck by the bitterness of his criticisms of the scholar-jurists
(including theologians) of his time. The first of the forty books of this
lengthy work is entitled Knowledge (or
Science), for which the Arabic is ‘ilm; and the corresponding agent-noun
is ‘dlim, with the plural ‘ulama’ (often anglicized as “ulema”),
which properly means “knower” or “scientist” but is here usually translated as
“scholar-jurist”. An understanding of these etymological connections helps one
to realize the appropriateness of a critique of scholar jurists in a book
dealing with Knowledge.

This critique of the scholar-jurists is by no means a novel or
original feature in the thought of al-Ghazali. From the beginning the ascetic
and mystical movement in Islam had made vigorous criticisms of the worldliness
of the rulers of the Islamic empire and of those scholars who were prepared to
take office (in such positions as judges) under the rulers. Under the Umayyad
regime, while the class of religious intellectuals was still in embryo and they
scarcely deserved to be called “scholar jurists”, a member of this group might
act as judge temporarily on behalf of the caliph or a provincial governor, but
he often did so without receiving any remuneration; this was presumably
possible because he was still receiving a stipend from the state like all the
other Muslims. The recognition given to the scholar jurists at the beginning of
the ‘Abbasid period (7go onwards), together with the apparent disappearance of
the system of stipends, led to a new situation. The appointment of a
scholar-jurist to a judgeship became a more frequent occurrence, but at the
same time fewer of the scholar-jurists could afford to fulfil such duties without remuneration. A new Islamic educational
system developed, directed to the study of the “religious sciences” and
particularly of Islamic law; and those who were trained in this way normally
expected a career in some branch of public service, or the administration of
the empire. It was impossible, however, to be involved in the work of
government without being infected by the worldliness, the love of wealth, power
and honour, which was endemic in the ruling institution of a great empire.

Along
with this more or less inevitable trend towards worldliness among those trained
in the religious sciences there went a movement of protest. Some idea of its
volume may be gained from the numerous quotations given by al-Ghazali in the
sixth chapter of the book mentioned.26 These include sayings of the Companions
of Muhammad, such as the caliph Umar. The earlier sayings, however, unless they
are of a very general nature, are suspect as later inventions. A relatively
early ascetic, al-Fudayl ibn-Iyad (d. 803), is reported to have said that
“wicked scholars will be dealt with first on the Resurrection Day, even before
the idol-worshippers”: and this may well be genuine. From other sources we
learn how he boldly criticized and upbraided Haran ar-Rashid to his face; and a
remark of his about avoiding Qur’an-reciters since their evidence would be
accepted against one seems to imply his awareness of the consequences of a
measure of public recognition of this minor section of the religious
institution.27 Somewhat later Yahya ibn-Mu’adh ar-Razi (d. 871) complained that
“the glory of science and wisdom departs when they are used to gain this
world”, and taunted the “men of science” with “having castles like Caesar’s,
mansions like Chosroes’, . . . doctrines like Satan’s, and no place for
Muhammad’s law’.28 Another bold ascetic, Hatim the Deaf (d. 851),publicly
shamed the judge of Rayy (Rey, in Persia) in his own audience-chamber because
of the ostentatious luxury in which he lived.29 Criticisms of worldly and
hypocritical scholars are to be found in the extant works of men like al-Harith
ibn-Asad al-Muhasibi (d. 857) and Abu-Talib al-Makki (d. 996).30

In view
of all this it might he thought that al-Ghazali was merely repeating customary
criticisms. The vehemence of his expressions, however, leads one to think that
this was something about which he had strong personal feelings; and this
impression is confirmed by the fact that he devotes most of the preface of The Revival of the Religious Sciences to
commenting on the shortcomings of contemporary “scientists”, that is, the
scholar-jurists. He addresses this preface to one who is inclined to blame
those like himself who for reasons of piety turn from worldliness and from the
worldly scholars (of the religious sciences) who, according to Tradition, would
be the persons most severely punished on Resurrection Day. Then he continues:

“Indeed, there is no cause for your persistence in pride apart
from the disease, common to the multitudes of ordinary men, of failing to
notice the essence of this matter and not realizing how important and serious
it is. The world-to-come is advancing and this-world receding; the time (of
death) is near, the journey long, the provisions deficient, the danger great
and the road blocked. Everything save knowledge and action sincerely for the
sake of God by a clear-sighted critic (of himself) is rejected. To travel the
road of the world-tocome without guide or companion, when its mischances are so
many, is wearisome and laborious. The guides for the way are the ulema, who are
the heirs of the prophets. But this age is bereft of them; there remain only
those who are such in outward seeming; over most of them Satan has gained
mastery. Their, rebellious nature has deceived them. Each has become greatly
delirious of his present transient lot. He has come to consider good evil and
evil good, so that religious knowledge has been obliterated and the light of
guidance in various parts of the world quenched. They have led men to suppose
that there is no knowledge (or science) except a legal-opinion (fatwa) of the government by which the judges are
helped to settle a quarrel of the plebeian masses; or else argument, by which the seeker of glory is armed for knock-out victory; or else
meretricious saj’ (ornate rhymed
prose), by which the preacher deceives the ordinary people. Apart from these
three things there is no snare to hunt forbidden (pleasures) and no net to
catch worldly vanities.

“The science of the road of the world-to-come, on the other
hand, and the learning, wisdom, knowledge, illumination, light, guidance and
direction, as God calls them in scripture, by which the noble Muslims of old
lived their lives, have become rejected among men and completely forgotten.
Since this is a grave weakness in a religion and a black mark against it, I
thought it right to busy myself with composing this book, out of a concern for
the revival of the religious sciences, to show the practices of the former
leaders, and to make clear the limits of the useful sciences in the eyes of the
prophets and the noble Muslims of old.” 31

Throughout
the book of Knowledge al-Ghazali
never allows the readers to forget his critical attitude towards the
scholar-jurists of the day. Hisdiscussion of the various branches of
religious knowledge (in chapter 2) culminates in an assessment of them by the
criterion of how far they help to fit a man for the life of the worldto-come.
The same conception becomes a basis (in the following chapter) for deciding how
far it is good to pursue any particular branch; while the long sixth chapter
points the contrast between the ulema of thisworld and the ulema of the
world-to-come. The following
are the chief points made by al-Ghazali.

(1)
Most of the religious knowledge of the day, as studied by the scholar-jurists,
is purely this-worldly and deals only with such matters as the ordering of the
life of society. From what al-Ghazali says, it appears that they were in the
habit of spending much time and energy in the discussion of legal points which
had little practical application; for example, details for formulae of divorce
which were perhaps rarely used, or questions concerning fine points of
“difference” between the recognized legal rites. (It should be noted, however,
that in respect of such matters our general knowledge of the period is scanty
and does not enable us to do more than make deductions from al-Ghazali’s own
words.) While those who claim to be religious scholars thus exercise themselves
in academic trifles, they neglect the real business of religion, the
preparation of man for the life of the world-to-come. Those who are so learned
about rare forms of divorce can tell you nothing about the simpler things of
the spiritual life, such as the meaning of sincerity towards God or trust in
him (ikhlas, tawakkul).

(2) The attempt of such men to
justify their conduct on religious grounds is unsatisfactory. They say that
this is a “communal obligation” (fard
kifaya), that is, something which ought to be done by some unspecified
members of the community for the sake of the whole, but which is not incumbent
on every one as is an “individual obligation” (fard ‘ayn). But al-Ghazali points out that it is not for a Muslim
to undertake a “communal obligation” until he has performed all his “individual
obligations”, and that too many persons are performing this “communal
obligation” while certain other “communal obligations”, such as being a doctor
in a small town, are neglected-there are many towns where the only doctors are
Jews and Christians, persons not qualified to give evidence in a Muslim
law-court. So al-Ghazali concludes that it is not zeal for the performance of
“communal obligations” that leads so many to become scholar-jurists.

(3) The
corollary of this is that in fact the majority of the religious scholars of the
day are chiefly concerned with their professional qualifications as a means of
gaining wealth, power and position. This is really the heart of his critique.
The intellectuals of the age have become infected by the worldliness of the
rulers. This is a worse fault, however, in those who claim to be religious
scholars, for it means that they are hypocritical and do not practise what they
preach. Among al-Ghazali’s quotations is one from a poet not named which echoes
the Gospel saying about the salt which has lost its savour: “O reciters (of the
Qur’an), 0 salt of the city, what use is salt, if the salt is corrupted?”32

(4)
Al-Ghazali further holds that the true scholar will have nothing to do with
rulers and will not accept offices from them. The true scholar will even avoid
having to give a formal legal-opinion when he is asked to do so-presumably
because this was part of the official legal procedure and indeed of the
business of government.33 He even held that the religious scholar should teach
freely without any remuneration.34

(5) While al-Ghazali has this generally critical attitude, he does
not entirely condemn the study of the various branches of religious knowledge.
They have their uses, even if these are restricted to the ordering of society
in this world. What is important is not to forget
that man’s true destiny is in the world-to-come, and, in the light of this,
to allow the usefulness of each branch of religious knowledge to determine the
extent to which it is studied.

A further criticism of the
religious intellectuals of the time is implicit in another work by al-Ghazali, The Decisive Criterion for distinguishing
between Islam and Unbelief, which was composed some time after The Revival of the Religious Sciences. It
was apparently the custom for various schools of thought among the theologians
to regard as an unbeliever anyone who disagreed with them on some comparatively
minor point. Al-Ghazali complains that men are being too light-hearted in
calling other Muslims unbelievers, since this is an assertion with serious
legal consequences-it is not a crime to kill an unbeliever. Part of the trouble
is that, if one defines “unbelief” as “regarding Muhammad as false in any part
of his message”, then each party can show how the others regard as false some
parts of what it considers to be the message. This leads to a discussion of
“interpretation” and five different senses of “existence”. From this standpoint
the disputes between sects such as those mentioned are seen to be about canons
of interpretation. Al-Ghazali proposes the eirenic solution that, so long as a
man accepts the basic credal statements in
some sense he cannot be called an “unbeliever”, but at most “erring” or
“heretical”.

It has
also to be noticed that, especially during the period of his professorship at
Baghdad from July 1091 to November 1095, al-Ghazali was deeply involved both in
the worldliness of the intellectuals and in the dependence on the government
which he later criticized. The teacher to whom he owed most, al-Juwayni, had
himself been appointed by the vizier, Nizam-al-Mulk, to the latter’s new
college at Nishapur, as part of his policy of encouraging and supporting
Ash’arite theologians. On al-Juwayni’s death in July 1085 al-Ghazali had gone
to the “camp” of the vizier, and had apparently spent the following six years
in his entourage. It was Nizam-al-Mulk who was responsible for his appointment
to the professorship in Baghdad. In Baghdad he was at the official ceremony of
taking the oath to the new caliph, al-Mustaz’hir, in February 1094, and was
sufficiently well known to him to be asked by him to write a polemical work
against the Batinites. Thus al-Ghazali had known something of the favour of
rulers. It may also be that after the deaths of Nizam-al-Mulk and the sultan
Malikshah in the autumn of 1092 he found relations with the rulers difficult.
There was fighting between members of the Seljuq family, and it was not till
about February 1095 that Barkiyaruq was finally recognized in Baghdad. The
caliph and al-Ghazali had shown some support for other candidates for supreme
power, and al-Ghazali would therefore be suspect to the government after
February 1095.

During
this period he must also have known something of the fierce rivalries between
the scholar-jurists of Baghdad, especially between the Hanbalites and the
Ash’arites. The Hanbalites seem to have been still furious at the very existence of the Nizamiyya college and at
everyone connected with it. Even between the professors there personal
difficulties seem to have been considerable. One of the men whom al-Ghazali
seems to have replaced had been appointed only the year before, but was brought
back after al-Ghazali’s departure. Politics doubtless entered into the
appointment and demotion of professors in ways which have not been properly
studied, and for the study of which adequate materials may not be available.

For
men in such circumstances their whole careers would depend on worldly
calculations of political advantage and disadvantage. It would be difficult for
them to be immersed in such a life and not to accept in full the values of this
section of society. Thus personal experience of this kind of life is a large
part of the ground for al-Ghazali’s criticism of the scholar-jurists.
Similarly, his advice to have nothing to do with rulers must be the outcome of
some deep disillusionment with governmental support.

4 DOGMATIC THEOLOGY FROM A NEW STANDPOINT

(a) General Attitude to Theology

After
the study of the Qur’an, at first mainly by memorizing, the staple of higher
education-education in the “Islamic sciences”-was jurisprudence with its
subordinate disciplines, such as the study of Traditions and traditionists.
Theology or kalam was like a “special
subject”, somewhat beyond the usual curriculum, to which only a few outstanding
students would give prolonged attention. Of all the men named as being teachers
of al-Ghazali only al-Juwayni seems to have lectured to him in theology. This
must have been in the years immediately preceding the death of al-Juwayni in
1085. It is unlikely that after this al-Ghazali met anyone who influenced his
theological development, except negatively by stating views which he felt bound
to criticize.

Chronologically
these well-attested facts fit in with the account al-Ghazali gives in Deliverance from Error, except for the
fact that he speaks of having written some books about theology, whereas his
extant theological works, notably one which may be called The Golden Mean inBelief, are clearly subsequent to
his study of philosophy (as will presently be explained in detail). It is
possible that, when he wrote this, al-Ghazali was thinking about books on the
principles of jurisprudence. On other grounds, however, it seems certain that Deliverance from Error is arranged
schematically and does not follow the strict chronological order. When this is
admitted, there is no further difficulty about the relation of the
autobiographical statements to the extant works. There is an important
consequence, however, namely that we have no information about al-Ghazali’s
theological views until after he had studied philosophy and was well on the way
to becoming a Sufi. The major extant work is the book just mentioned, The Golden Mean in Belief, and it cannot
have been written earlier than the summer of 1095, just before he left Baghdad.
It quotes The Inconsistency of the
Philosophers (completed in January 1095) and other books of about the
same time; its use of syllogisms shows that it is subsequent to his study of
Aristotelian logic; and the impression of a careful scholar like Maurice
Bouyges was that the writer’s preoccupations were the same as in the Inconsistency.35On the other hand,
The Golden Mean is prior to the Revival, since it is mentioned there.

Now
we know something about al-Ghazali’s later attitude to theology from what he
says about it in Deliverance from Error. 36There
he makes two main points. Firstly, the aim of the theologians was to defend
dogma against heretical aberrations and innovations. Secondly, the theologians
failed to meet the logical demands of those who had studied Aristotelian logic,
since their arguments were directed against those who already shared their own
point of view to a considerable extent. He had already spoken of this limited
aim of theology in the Revival, while
also emphasizing that theology contributed nothing to the actual practice of
the religious life.37 That he felt something of this inadequacy of theology as
he wrote The Golden Mean is suggested
by the prayer at the end: “We pray God that he will not make this of ill
outcome for us, but will place it in the balance of good deeds when our acts
are given back to us”.39 Nevertheless the references to it in the Revival and other later works show that
he continued to regard it as valuable so far as it went. In a short summary of
the Revival he has an interesting
description of it. He is speaking of three possible attitudes towards the
doctrines of the creed: firstly, belief or simple acceptance, then knowledge of
their proofs and finally knowledge of their mysteries. After mentioning the
statement of the creed in the Revival, he
goes on: “as for the proofs ... we have set them down in The Golden Mean in Belief in some hundred pages; it is a book
devoted entirely to this main matter (?), containing the essence of the science
of the theologians, but more adequate in its proofs and more apt to knock at
the doors of knowledge (of the mysteries) than the official (or normal)
theology which is met in the books of the theologians”.39

The
conclusion to which these reflections lead is that the statements in Deliverance from Error about rejecting
theology and turning from it have to be understood in a restricted sense.
Al-Ghazali was dissatisfied with theology because it contributed little or
nothing to the attainment of that goal of the individual life which he
described as “salvation” or the bliss of Paradise. But he thought that it had a
prophylactic function in the life of the community, and, in so far as this was
so, he continued to hold the views of the Ash’ ante school to which he had
always belonged. There is no evidence in the works generally accepted as
authentic that in his closing years he abandoned Ash’arite doctrines for the
Neoplatonism he had refuted in The
Inconsistency of the Philosophers. On the contrary, the date which has been
found for a small work called The
Restraining of the Commonalty from the Science of Theology sets the
completion of this work only a few days before his death. There seem to be no
strong grounds for not accepting this date. The book implies that the theology
which ordinary men are to be kept away from is Sunnite theology, and might be
looked on as an elaboration of a point of view already expressed in The Golden Mean.4° In other words,
although al-Ghazali thought the importance of theology had been. greatly
exaggerated, he continued to take up a theological position which was broadly
Ash’arite.

(b) Al-Ghazali’s Exposition of His Theological Views

In studying al-Ghazali’s
dogmatic theology the chief interest is in noticing the contrast between his
exposition and that of al-Juwayni. For this purpose we have, by al-Juwayni, The Right Guidanre,41 a work of about twice the length
of al-Ghazali’s Golden Mean and
covering much the same ground-both works are of what has been called the Summa
Theologica type. In addition we have The
Nazamian Creed, 42which covers most of the subjects of The Golden Mean in about half the
compass. According to the manuscript, however, this book is the version of a
young Spanish scholar who had it from al-Ghazali in Baghdad, presumably between
1093 and 1095. This would mean that this was the book which al-Ghazali used as
a text for his lectures; in the main it must be al-Juwayni’s book, but
al-Ghazali may have made slight modifications here and there. 43 Proceeding on
the assumption that it is essentially the work of al-Juwayni, we note that it
stands somewhere between The Right
Guidance and The Golden Mean; the
author has become interested in some of the problems raised by the
philosophers, but he does not deal with philosophical objections nearly so
fully as al-Ghazali. This confirms the reports that al-Juwayni introduced
al-Ghazali to the study of philosophy.44

In his
own exposition al-Ghazali follows the standard plan for the arrangement of
topics in such treatises. 45 He has four parts or chapters dealing respectively
with the proof of the existence of a Creator, the attributes of God, the
relations of God and man, and questions connected with prophethood and the
imamate (or leadership of the Islamic community). In addition he has four
prefaces, in the fourth of which he briefly explains the nature of syllogism.

The early pages dealing with
the proof of the existence of God are sufficient to show how completely
al-Ghazali had accepted the syllogism as the primary form of argument. Thus his
essential proof of the existence of God is:

“Every
originated thing has a cause.
The world is an originated thing.
Therefore the world has a cause.”

He then
considers how we know the two premisses. The major premiss he regards as a necessary
first principle. The minor premiss he proves by another syllogism:

“Everything
not-without-originated-things is originated.
Every body is not-without-originated-things.
Therefore every body is originated.”

He then
points out that the dispute with the philosophers is over the major premiss
here, and proceeds to discuss it further. All this is in sharp contrast with
al-Juwayni’s basic argument: an originated-thing may exist or not exist;
therefore it requires a determinant, to determine whether it is to exist or not
exist at a particular time. This determinant may be either a cause (‘illa), or a nature (tabi‘a) or a conscious agent; various
arguments show that it is not a cause or a nature; therefore it must be a
conscious agent. This method of enumerating possibilities exhaustively and then
eliminating all but one was very popular with al-Ghazali’s predecessors, and
al-Juwayni was still attached to it. On a minor point he has what is tantamount
to a syllogism:

“What
does not precede originated-things is originated.

Substances
do not precede accidents (which are originated).
Therefore the world (the totality of substances and accidents) is originated.”

Al-Juwayni, however, does not
call attention to the special form of this argument. If, as is possible, he had
some elementary knowledge of syllogistic logic, he did not realize its
superiority to the methods of argument traditional among Islamic theologians.46

The
importance of the syllogism was not so much in respect of particular arguments
as of the system as a whole. There is a certain order in syllogistic reasoning.
The premiss of one syllogism may be the conclusion of another, and this other
is then logically prior. If the order of priority is not duly observed, there
is a vicious circle in the reasoning. While there could be chains of reasoning
according to the older logic, there was not the same over-all order. Each chain
of argument tends to be treated as an isolated unit, and propositions are
asserted without considering whether they are logically prior or posterior to
others. Al-Juwayni has a section proving that God is not a body, directed
mainly against Muslim anthropomorphists; and he then follows it with one on
substance directed mainly against the Christians. Al-Ghazali changes this
order; he first proves that God is not a substance (or atom), and then neatly
adds that he cannot be a body, since a body is two or more substances 47 In
particular, attention may be directed to a remark by al-Juwayni that “if you
call God a body, you either contradict the proof of the originatedness of
substances, since this proof is based on their being receptive of composition,
contiguity and separation, or ...” In a syllogistic system the point could have
been made more vigorously, since there could have been a reference to a
proposition already proved; here, because of the lack of a recognized order,
there is some suggestion of uncertainty about previous conclusions. When in Deliverance from Error al-Ghazali notes
that the philosophers do not manage to prove all their metaphysical views
syllogistically, this is an indication of his intense interest in logic and of
the attention he paid to the logical aspects of others’ thought and his own.
This concern for logical method and logical order leads to many changes in the
detail of his proofs, compared with those of al-Juwayni.

The
other point to be commented on is al-Ghazali’s much greater awareness of the
philosophers as opponents, and a corresponding reduction of emphasis on
arguments against other adversaries. In The
Right Guidance al-Juwayni makes practically no attempt to argue against the
Neoplatonic philosophers. In The Nizamian
Creed the philosophical conceptions of the necessary, the possible and the
impossible are in the forefront, and a measure of attention is given to the
positions of the philosophers. But al-Ghazali’s study of philosophy had brought
into his ken a whole new world of objections, and this is apparent in his
exposition of theology, especially in the proofs of the existence of God 48

These
two points-the conscious basing of the arguments on syllogistic logic, and the
attention to objections from a Neoplatonic standpoint-are in fact al-Ghazali’s
great contributions to the later development of Islamic theology. From now
onwards all the rational theologians in Islam wrote in a way which assumed a
philosophical outlook in pre-theological matters, and often explicitly
discussed such matters. Indeed in some of the treatises the philosophical
preliminaries occupy by far the larger part of the work, so that the impression
is given that the authors were more interested in the philosophy than in the
actual theology.

From
another point of view it might be asserted that what al-Ghazali had done was to
effect a complete fusion of the Greek and Islamic intellectual traditions. This
refers, of course, to the Greek tradition in the form in which it was still
alive in the lands of the ‘Abbasid caliphate. While there is much truth in the
assertion, it must not be allowed to make us think that the philosophers were essentially
an alien element in the population and that al-Ghazali made their disciplines
available for “native” thinkers. There was much that was common to the
philosophers and the theologians. Both believed in rational argument. The
difference was that the philosophers had elaborated logic more fully and were
more conscious of what they were doing. The theologians, however, had also
given some thought to logic, though perhaps more in the sphere of jurisprudence
than of theology proper (but all theologians were also competent in
jurisprudence). Thus it would be wrong to say that “more up-to-date” or “more
scientific” methods were incorporated into theology, for thus we should be
importing our own values. Both sides had the same values, but the philosophers had
realized them more fully.

The
real opposition, at least in Baghdad, was the Hanbalite school of theology,
which was still suspicious of rational argument in any form, and continued to
be so. The most remarkable expression of this line of thought is in The Refutation of the Logicians by Ibn
Taymiyya (d. 1328). What is remarkable is that, though the author finds
weaknesses in Aristotelian logic with great skill and acumen, he does not use
his obvious mastery of the subject to provide a superior logic, but to urge the
abandonment altogether of the attempt to systematize the material of revelation
(in the Qur’an and the Traditions) and to defend it rationally. This distrust
of reason is an important trend to be found in Western civilization as well as
in Islam. It is still alive in Islam in the Wahhabites of Arabia and other
fundamentalists. In the West the protest against excessive rationalism has

been taken up by
existentialism, and this is perhaps the nearest man can come to the statement
of a rational case for distrusting reason.

The
new perspective introduced by al-Ghazali into Islamic theology, then, became
part of its permanent nature. In this we see one important aspect of the growth
of a theology. The theologian at any given time is producing replies to the
objections raised by the opponents of his religion. These opponents attack him
at every possible point. Some of their criticisms will be stronger than others;
some of his replies will be more effective than others. All this he hands on to
his successor, who is usually his pupil. Where the replies have been effective,
the pupil repeats them; if he can think of better ones he substitutes them; and
he has also to add new replies to new criticisms. Thus the theology of a
religious community is constantly growing. It retains all that is satisfactory
in the work of past theologians. There may be less emphasis on old arguments,
since the bearers of the criticisms to which they were replies may have died
out-but there is always the chance that someone may revive an old objection, or
that it may crop up in a new form. So in its intellectual basis a religious
community retains something of all its past-of its responses to the varying
situations through which it defined itself. There is even a sense in which the continued
existence of different intellectual traditions within a community (such as
fundamentalist and rational-theological) is part of its definition of itself.
From this standpoint we begin to realize the vastness of al-Ghazali’s
contribution to present-day Islam.

VI
THE BITTERNESS OF WORLDLY
SUCCESS

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

In the course of the year rags
al-Ghazali had what would now be called a “breakdown”. Although it was
essentially a psychological or spiritual crisis, it came to a head in July of
that year when physical symptoms –an inability to utter words–forced him to
abandon lecturing. Since some of his books must be ascribed to about this date,
it is probable that he was able to continue writing. After
much hesitation he at length came to a decision. In November 1095 he set out
from Baghdad and made for Syria, thereby abandoning his professorship and his
position as a public figure in order to lead what was in effect a monastic
life.1 In order to understand this astonishing step, we must look at the previous
history of the sufi or mystical-monastic movement. 2

VI
THE BITTERNESS OF WORLDLY
SUCCESS

1 THE SUFI MOVEMENT

THE word sufi is an
adjective from suf, wool,
and its common meaning is derived
from the fact that from the ninth century the practice of wearing a white
woollen robe became normal among Muslim mystics. Both the practice and the word
are found in the eighth century, but they were then exceptional.3 There is an
important sense, of course, in which Islamic mysticism begins with Muhammad himself.
It is difficult to be certain about details, for all we have to go on is what
we deduce from the Qur’an and from the Traditions-and the Traditions themselves
are often dubious. Yet in general it is clear that Muhammad had profound
mystical experiences, which both stirred him to the depths and were a .source
of spiritual power to him. How his experiences are to be described in terms of
the later systematization of “stations” and “states” is a question that may be
neglected here; for one thing he was probably much less conscious of his inner
life than were the later mystics. What is beyond doubt is that his inner
experiences were such that they gave him a firm conviction that God was real.
This conviction supported the basic Islamic conception of the true nature of
human life-activity in accordance with God’s commands, leading to the eternal
bliss of Paradise.4

From
the lifetime of Muhammad onwards, there were Muslims to whom the element of
piety or spirituality in the Qur’an made a strong appeal. In the earliest days
such Muslims were nearly all Arabs. With the conversion of the inhabitants of
Iraq there came into Islam many persons who had been in touch with the
Christian mystical tradition; and it is mainly among non-Arabs that mysticism
in the strict sense develops. The most prominent figure of the seventh and
early eighth century was al-Hasan al-Basri(643-728).5 While most of his thought
and teaching is along the line of asceticism, he occasionally touches on the
conception of love towards God. He had a great influence on his contemporaries
and successors, and the names and sayings have been recorded of many
ascetic-mystics who lived during the eighth and ninth centuries.

Other
important figures are those of al-Junayd (d. 910) and al-Hallaj (d.922). Although
the latter was executed for heresy, Louis Massignon, who has studied his life
and teaching in great detail, maintains that his essential aim (and also that
of al-Junayd) was to make the spiritual energy generated in the lives of the
ascetics and mystics a fructifying and vitalizing agency in the life of the
whole community as it pursued its essential aim of living according to God’s
commands and thereby attaining Paradise.6 The-position of these two men is in
contrast to various aberrations which Massignon labels intellectualism,
libertarianism, dualism and monism? These faults may occur in combination.
Intellectualism is exaggeration of the importance of the human intellect or
reasoning faculty (at the expense of revelation). Similarly libertarianism is
exaggeration of the importance of the human will and human effort. It is often
associated with monism, that is, exaggeration of God’s immanence, leading to
assertions of the mystic’s identity with God. A notable example of this is the
celebrated or notorious Abu-Yazid al-Bistami (d. 875}, who gives the impression
of aiming at control of the world of inner experience through his own efforts,
employing various ascetical practices and techniques (some perhaps derived from
India).8 The fourth aberration, dualism, is undue exaggeration of God’s
transcendence and is found in circles usually regarded as theologically
conservative.

There
was much mysticism during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Mysticism had
become a part of the general life of the Islamic community. It was not
something separated and isolated, as some Western accounts of the subject
suggest, but belonged to the ordinary life of Muslims. Occasionally little
coteries of sufis might withdraw into seclusion; but at the same time a
surprisingly large number of the scholar-jurists, of whom there are
biographical notices, are said to have been Sufis. In other words, the mystics
were not a sect apart but shared in the disputes of the community about matters
of theology and jurisprudence and included men of the most divergent views in
these respects. Thus the struggle between the various mystical doctrines or
“aberrations” was not entirely cut off from the other intellectual struggles of
the period. The most outstanding mystic of the century before al-Ghazali is
probably al-Qushayri (d. 1072), who was also a Shaft ite jurist. Like several
other men, he aimed at a synthesis of Asharite dogmatics and certain mystical
elements, but his synthesis is adjudged “insufficient” by Massignon? The
situation demanded a radical rethinking of the whole of Islamic theology, and
the conservative ethos of Islam made this incredibly difficult. Al-Ghazali
later made a more strenuous effort of the same kind, but whether he was more
successful must remain doubtful.

One of
the aspects of the Sufi movement to which comparatively little attention has
been given is its relation to contemporary history and social conditions. It is
held that the early ascetic trends were a reaction to the wealth and luxury
which came to the leading men of the Islamic empire along with their vast
conquests; 10 and this seems to be true of the earliest period. A little later
there are traces of attacks by the ascetics and mystics on the worldliness and
hypocrisy of the scholar-jurists.” In a way the faults of these men were more
serious than those of a ruler, for they were the heart and conscience of
Islamic society. From the first, Islam had been protesting against worldliness
and the materialistic pursuit of wealth (in the case of the rich merchants of Mecca),
and it was thus a disaster for its spiritual leaders to become worldly and
materialistic.

It is
permissible to wonder why, about the year boo, there should have been a
flowering of the higher mysticism in men like al-Junayd and al-Hallaj; but the
most that can be done here is to give some simple suggestions towards a
solution of the problem. It seems most likely that here, as in the general
study of the life of al-Ghazali, fuller understanding is to be gained by
attending closely to the position of the scholar-jurists in the community and
their attitudes to the rulers and the common people. Much had been happening in
the ninth century. At the beginning there had been the work of ash-Shag! in
bringing greater objectivity to the bases of law by insisting on Traditions,
duly transmitted, of the words or acts of Muhammad. This produced later in the
century the standard collections of “sound Traditions” by al-Bukhari (d. 870)
and Muslim (d. 875). By giving greater intellectual coherence to legal doctrine
these developments must have strengthened the position of the scholar-jurists,
but at the same time must have made them more of a closed corporation. The
latter point has its sinister aspect when it is remembered that the Mihna or
Inquisition of 833-849 had demonstrated the complete domination of the
scholar-jurists as a class and corporation by the rulers. The Inquisition was
eventually given up for reasons of state and not because of the resistance of
Ahmad ibn-Hanbal and one or two others.

From this time on the
scholar-jurists, with hardly any exceptions, are wholly subservient to the
government. Men who have not the courage to stand for Islamic law in its purity
soon lose their zeal for that purity; instead, they become filled with desires
for worldly wealth, position and power.12

The
years from about 900 to 1100 saw fresh vicissitudes. For half a century or more
after 945 Baghdad was under the rule of the Shi‘ite Buwayhid sultans. Though
the Sunnite scholar-jurists continued to have official recognition, their power
was somewhat less, and it was difficult to maintain even this without becoming
more involved in court intrigues. All this would tend to make the
scholar-jurists still more self-seeking. After the unsettled years that
followed the decline in Buwayhid power, the advent of the Seljuqs in 1055
brought a measure of peace. When a little later the Seljuq government, guided
by Nizam-al-Mulk, decided to support and indeed promote Ash’arism, the
dependence of the scholar-jurists on the rulers was, if anything, increased.
The merging of the class of scholar-jurists with that of secretaries (civil
servants), which had been proceeding for at least two centuries, was almost
completed. One of the results was the succumbing of the scholar-jurists to the
politicians’ disease of worldliness and materialism -an epidemic to which
al-Ghazali’s criticismsi3 bear witness.

This
then is the situation in which the sufi movement flourished. The sufis were
those members of the intellectual class who had a genuine spiritual concern
which had not been choked and killed by worldliness. The forces of worldliness
were so strong in political and judicial circles that it was impossible for
such men to express their spiritual aspirations in public activity. Moreover in
many respects a superficial conformity with minimum Islamic standards had been
attained.

In
these circumstances it was natural that the higher spiritual aspirations should
seek to express themselves in the cultivation of the inner life. Here they were
free from the domination of the “system”–the rigidified body of Islamic legal
thought–with all the worldly and materialistic political attitudes now
associated with it. In certain cases such a turning from public activity to the
inner life would rightly be regarded as escapism–a refusal to face up to
difficulties. Here, however, the change seems to be justified. On the one hand,
the worldliness woven into the context of social and political life made it
virtually impossible to realize further spiritual aims in an external way in
this context. On the other hand, the vision of man and his place in the
universe (which was the essence of Islam) had guided and inspired men to a
realization of the vision in the external forms of Islamic society, and this
very success suggested the need for a switch to greater emphasis on the inner
life and the channelling of efforts in this direction. Thus the adoption of the
mystic life is not simply a refusal to face difficulties. The spiritual vision
which had hitherto guided the development of Islamic religion was itself
pointing to greater concentration on the inner life.

2 THE CRISIS OF 1095

In his
autobiography, Deliverance from Error, al-Ghazali
appears to say that he turned to the study of Sufism only after he had found no
satisfaction in his study of theology, philosophy and Batinism. Despite this,
however, he must have had contacts with Sufism at a much earlier period. The
guardian to whom he and his brother were entrusted on his father’s death is
called a Sufi.14 While he was a student at Tus, also, he seems to have bad as a
spiritual director a man called Yusuf an-Nassaj, to whom he related his dreams
and by whom his character was
“polished”; unfortunately nothing more is known about this man.15 Al-Juwayni,
under whom al-Ghazali was studying theology at Nishapur from 1077 to 1085, was
sympathetic to Sufism. Another professor at Nishapur at this period, under whom
al-Ghazali worked, was al-Farmadhi; though some of his lectures may have been
on jurisprudence (which he had studied under the elder al-Ghazali), he was a
pupil of al-Qushayri and had become a recognized leader of the Sufis in Tus and
Nishapur.I6 He had been accepted by Nizamal-Mulk, and indeed his standing with
him was such that he was able to criticize the vizier’s faults to his face.17
Since another of his pupils was the son (al-Hasan) of al-Ghazali’s first
teacher of jurisprudence at Tus (Ahmad ar-Radhakani),18 it is clear that
al-Ghazali was moving in circles that were very favourable to Sufism. It is
also clear, however, that after some instruction and a limited amount of
mystical practice al-Ghazali became more interested in theology and philosophy
and neglected mysticism.19

According
to Deliverance from Error al-Ghazali
was greatly concerned in his student days and in the immediately following
years with the quest for certainty. His first crisis, when for a time he was a
complete sceptic, arose from the realization that the methods he had been
employing did not give absolute certainty. He had probably begun the study of
philosophy before this crisis, and he may have reached the point of seeing that
in theology and metaphysics the philosophers did not follow a strict logical
method. At the close of the period of scepticism he found himself able to
accept some basic principles because of a “light from God”; as we might put it,
he saw directly, or had an immediate intuition, that these principles were
true. In 1095 when the second crisis came upon him he already had a steadfast
faith in God, prophethood and the Last Day.20 Despite his way of putting things
in Deliverance from Error, which
makes it appear that he was making a personal search for truth in his study of
Batinism, it seems unlikely that there was much personal engagement; he was
primarily fulfilling a duty imposed on him by the caliph, though in doing so he
may have come to understand more fully the place of Muhammad in the community.
In keeping with all this the crisis of 1095 came upon him at a time when his
dominant aim was not to find intellectual certainty but to achieve a satisfying
life, a life worthy of Paradise. This may be seen from his own description of
the crisis, of which the following is an abbreviated version.21

“Lastly I turned to the way of the
mystics. I knew that in their path there has to be both knowledge and activity,
and that the object of the latter is to purify the self from vices and faults
of character. Knowledge was easier for me than activity. I began by reading
their books ... and obtained a thorough intellectual understanding of their
principles. Then I realized that what is most distinctive of them can be
attained only by personal experience (‘taste’-dhawq),
ecstasy and a change of character. ... I saw clearly that the mystics were
men of personal experience not of words, and that I had gone as far as possible
by way of study and intellectual application, so that only personal experience
and walking in the mystic way were left.

“In my previous
studies and in my practical living I had reached a steadfast faith in God,
prophethood and the Last Day; and these principles had become firmly fixed in
me not through logical proof but by various external and internal causes which
cannot be comprehended in detail. I was convinced that the happiness of the
world to come is to be attained only by a God fearing life and the discipline
of desire, and that the essential thing is to sever the attachment of the heart
to this world by turning from the sphere of deception to that of eternity, and
by earnestly seeking to draw near to God. This could only be done, too, by
rejecting wealth and position and by escaping from entanglements and
commitments.

“When I considered
my circumstances, I saw I was deeply involved in affairs, and that the best of
my activities, my teaching, was concerned with branches of knowledge which were
unimportant and worthless. I also examined my motive in teaching and saw that
it was not sincere desire to serve God but that I wanted an influential
position and widespread recognition. I was in no doubt that I stood on an
eroding sandbank, and was in imminent danger of hell-fire if I did not busy
myself with mending my ways.

“I kept thinking
about this for a time, as long as it remained a matter of choice. One day I
would decide to leave Baghdad and escape from my involvements; the next day I
would give up the decision. I would put one foot forward, and draw the other
back. Whenever morning found me with a genuine longing to seek the world to
come, evening saw it reduced to nothing by the attack of a host of desires.
Worldly desires were trying to keep me chained where I was, while the herald of
faith was summoning, ‘To the road! To the road! Little of life is left, and
before you is a long journey. Your intellectual and practical involvements are
hypocrisy and delusion. If you do not prepare for the future life now, when
will you prepare; if you do not sever your attachments now, when will you sever
them?’ At this I would be roused to make a firm decision to run away and
escape. Afterwards Satan would return and say, ‘This is a passing mood; do not
give in to it, for it will quickly cease. If you yield and leave this important
and influential position, where you are free from petty annoyances and immune
from the attacks of enemies, you may perhaps again experience its attraction
and find difficulty in returning.’

“For almost six
months beginning with July 1095 I was torn between the attraction of worldly
desires and the summons of the world to come. In that month the matter ceased
to be one of choice and became one of necessity. God parched my tongue and I
was prevented from teaching. I would make an effort to teach one day for the
sake of my audience, but my tongue would not utter a word. This impediment in
speech produced grief in my heart; my digestion was affected, and I could
hardly swallow anything. My general health declined, and the physicians,
realizing that the source of the trouble was in the heart, despaired of
successful treatment, unless the anxiety of the heart could be relieved.

“Aware of my
impotence and without the power of choice, I took refuge with God, driven to do
so because I had no resource left. He answered me, he ‘who answers the one
driven to him, when he calls on him’ (Qur’an 27. 62/63). He made it easy for my
heart to turn from position, wealth, children and friends. I made public my
decision to set out for Mecca, but my private plan was to travel to Syria, for
I did not want the caliph and all my friends to learn of my decision to spend
some time in Syria. This stratagem for leaving Baghdad I neatly carried out,
and was resolved never to return.

“Among the
religious leaders of Iraq there was much talk about me, for none thought it
possible that my abandonment of everything could have a religious ground.
Knowing no better, they considered that I had attained to the climax of a
religious career. People in general were confused in their explanations. Those
far from Iraq supposed I was apprehensive of ill-treatment by the rulers. Those
close to the rulers, who observed how they sought me out and how I kept aloof
from them, took the view that this was a supernatural affair, due to some evil
influence which had come over the people of Islam and the circle of the
scholars.”

One
important point in this account is that al-Ghazali was dissatisfied with the
subjects he was teaching. From his criticisms of the “religious sciences” in
the first book of The Revival it would appear that he was
thinking of the branches of jurisprudence chiefly cultivated at this time-and
this is a ground for holding that he lectured on jurisprudence at least as much
as on theology. Much attention was given to the study ofthe differences
between the main legal rites and to the elaboration of sections of the Shari’a
or revealed law which were of little practical application. Such subjects
undoubtedly gave men little help in leading a godly and upright life. In this
al-Ghazali was correct. What is surprising, however, is that he made no attempt
to use his position and influence to have changes made in the curriculum. This
at least is the natural reaction of a modem scholar, even when it is remembered
that changes in the curriculum would be much more difficult in the age of
al-Ghazali. Further reflection, however, suggests other considerations. Perhaps
al-Ghazali felt that the whole system was so permeated by false values that a
change in the curriculum, even if it could be effected, would be of little
avail. He would presumably have liked to include the moral and devotional
subjects ofwhich he writes in The
Revival of the Religious Sciences; but it might have been difficult to find
people to lecture in these, and they would not have been adequate training for
young lawyers.

His
abandonment of any attempt to reform higher education is also connected with
the second important point which appears in his account of the crisis-his
distrust of his own motives. He felt
he was in grave danger ofhell, and this chiefly on account of
his worldliness.

He
would seem to have come to the conclusion that he personally, because of his
temperament, was unable to be immersed in the life of the higher circles of
Baghdadian society without becoming contaminated by the prevalent worldliness.
He evidently did not feel that he was able, like his master al-Farmadhi, to
speak to the great ones about their faults. He was, of course, more involved in
the system than al-Farmadhi. He had practically the leading position among the
intellectuals of Baghdad, and presumably maintained a standard oflife in keeping with this position-and that in a world where the outward
signs of status were reckoned important. Had he attempted to take an
independent line in such circumstances, the result would certainly have been
unfortunate. He would be unlikely to accomplish much, and he would gain
ignominy for himself and hardships for his family. Freedom from worldly
involvements seemed to be a necessary condition for any attempt to bring about
a reform.

Ifit is thought that such an
attitude shows undue concern for the welfare of a man’s own soul at the expense
ofthe welfare of society, it should be remembered that this attitude
has deep roots in Islamic history. As early as the first century of Islam men
began to have scruples about receiving payment from the rulers for services in
judicial or legal matters. Originally-that is, in the days when all Muslims
were receiving adequate stipends from the public treasury-such services seem to
have been given without any special payment, and for long this was held up as
an ideal. Some men went so far as to hold that such services should not be
performed even without payment, since this degree of contact with worldly
rulers was corrupting. Long before al-Ghazali’s time, however, it had become
the usual practice for judges and similar officials to be paid. Yet the old
ideal was not completely dead. Al-Mas’udi (d. 956) tells of a man who, when he
first knew him, accepted poverty gladly, but who later became a judge and
completely changed in character for the worse 22

Two
views have been put forward in recent times which give a somewhat different
account from the above of the motives for al-Ghazali’s departure from Baghdad.
At the turn of the century Duncan Black Macdonald made the suggestion that the
withdrawal from teaching might have something to do with al-Ghazali’s being persona non grata with the sultan
Barkiyaruq.23 More recently Farid Jabre has argued with greater vehemence that
the dominant motive was fear of being assassinated by the Batinites.24

Macdonald’s
suggestion about the difficulties with Barkiyaruq was probably not intended to
do more than call attention to a secondary factor, since he accepted
al-Ghazali’s “conversion” to the mystic life as genuine. The chief arguments
were the coincidence of dates and al-Ghazali’s implication in the recognition
by the caliph of Barkiyaruq’s rival Tutush for a time in 1094. It was in
February 1095 that it became clear, with the death of Tutush, that Barkiyaruq
was victor in the struggle with him (which had lasted since the death of
Malikshah in November 1092). Al-Ghazali’s illness began in July 1095, and he
left Baghdad in November. Again, Barkiyaruq’s death was in late December 1104,
and it was some eighteen months later that al-Ghazali returned to teaching at
Nishapur. Because of this correspondence of dates, some causal connection
cannot be ruled out. On the whole, however, it seems unlikely. In the tangled
politics of the time, men frequently appeared to change sides. Barkiyaruq was
generally on good terms with Fakhr-al-Mulk, a son of Nizam-al-Mulk who had
inherited something of his talents and his policies, and who was later responsible
for al-Ghazali’s return to teaching at Nishapur. With this powerful support it
is not credible that al-Ghazali’s trifling fault would have necessitated his
departure from his post at Baghdad and he himself asserts that he was courted
by the rulers. There may be a grain of truth in the suggestion, however, in so
far as the vicissitudes of the years after 1092 and the need for maintaining a
delicate balance on the political tight-rope may have helped to convince
al-Ghazali that nothing of what he was interested in could be achieved through
politics and his semi-political position in Baghdad.

Jabre’s
views, which to begin with appear to be an explanation of al-Ghazali’s
departure from Baghdad, develop into an interpretation of his whole career. Of
his dogmatic theology Jabre writes: “he thus repeated against the Batinites
what Ash’ari had done two centuries earlier against the Mu’tazilites: starting
from their own principles he rethought Sunnite dogma for himself and for his
contemporaries”. He even goes so far as to say: “from 486/1093 this (sc. the work of Ghazali) had a single
aim: to substitute, in the belief of his contemporaries, for the infallibility
of the Batinite imam that of the Prophet, the sole intermediary between God and
man “.25 Now these are palpable exaggerations. It is true that al-Ghazali
sometimes speaks (as in Deliverance from
Error) of Muhammad as the infallible imam of the Muslims in general. But
there is not a single section of his chief dogmatic work The Golden Mean in Belief that is seriously affected by this
conception. The same is true of The
Revival of the Religious Sciences; everywhere
Muhammad is the great exemplar, according to the usual Sunnite outlook, but
nowhere is there an advance on this and an insistence on his infallibility as a
source of knowledge. While the reaction to Batinism may have contributed
something to these works, it cannot have been more than a minor factor.

Even as
an explanation of al-Ghazali’s outward conduct fear of assassination by the
Batinites is not adequate. Jabre argues that, while al-Ghazali may genuinely
have felt that he was too worldly, this fault could have been corrected without
leaving his position in Baghdad, and that therefore something further is
required to explain his departure, and that this must be fear of imminent
danger to his life.25 Yet, even if it is admitted that such a fear may explain
the departure from Baghdad, it does not explain why al-Ghazali chose the life
of a Sufi and cultivated mystical experience so assiduously; there were other
ways open to him of becoming inconspicuous. Indeed, it is difficult to see how
fear of assassination, which involves attaching greater importance to this
world than to the world to come, could lead to al-Ghazali’s intensity in
preparing for the world to come. Large tracts of his conduct are only to be
explained by a genuine belief in the Last judgement, and a man with a firm
belief of this kind would not be afraid of death as such but only as reducing
his time for preparing himself to be judged. If there was a real danger of his
being assassinated, this must be how it affected al-Ghazali. This is in
accordance with a passage on which Jabre lays some emphasis, in which
al-Ghazali is reported to have spoken of “the opening of a door of fear”;27 but
he went on to say, not that this caused him to leave Baghdad, but that it led
him to fuller ascetical practices and deeper mystical experiences.

Whether
there was any danger of assassination, such as Jabre supposes, must remain
doubtful. Though Nizam-al-Mulk had been assassinated in 1092, it is not clear
that assassination had been adopted by the Batinites as a regular practice
before 1095; most of the examples come after that. It is also worth noticing
that the danger was greater when al-Ghazali returned to teaching in 1106, and
that his new patron, Fakhr-al-Mulk, was assassinated a month or two after his
return. It is further not clear that al-Ghazali was the kind of person the
Batinites murdered-the caliph, for example, was surely in greater danger. One’s
respect for Jabre’s arguments is not increased when one finds him, without any
statement of reasons, disregarding accepted conclusions, such as Goldziher’s
dating of the Mustazahiri (his first
book in refutation of the Batinites) after The
Incoherence of the Philosophers.28 More serious is his interpretation of
some statements that certain philosophical circles were attracted to Batinism
as implying that it was a section of the Batinites who were attacked in The Incoherence; it should have been
obvious that no philosophically-minded person can at the same time hold that
truth is reached by syllogistic reasoning and by appeal to the pronouncements
of an infallible imam.

It is
important to see this matter in perspective. A perusal of the chronicles of the
period by Ibn-al-Athir makes it clear that there were many dangers threatening
men in political life besides that from the Batinites. There may have been some
personal threat to al-Ghazali from the Batinites of which we know nothing; but
even apart from this there was much to make him aware that life was precarious.
A sense of the precariousness of his life, whatever its source and whatever its
intensity, is not sufficient to account for all his intellectual and spiritual
development, but it would certainly contribute to the growth of his
dissatisfaction with the circumstances in which the intellectual of the time
had to work and with the quality of life that was possible. This
dissatisfaction is the key to al-Ghazali’s life; he expressly states it in the
opening book of The Revival; and, as
the present study is trying to show, he had good grounds for being
dissatisfied.

3 LIFE AS A SUFI

Before leaving Baghdad in
November 1095 al-Ghazali had made arrangements for the education of his
children, partly, it would seem, from his own wealth, and partly from
educational trusts which were numerous in Iraq. Doubtless he also made
provision for his wife or wives, in so far as that was not already done in the
marriage contract, but nothing is reported about this since in Islamic society
it was impolite to mention wives. After this he gave away the remainder of his
wealth, and thus committed himself to living the life of a poor Sufi.

In
Damascus, where he first went, he says he spent “nearly two years”, passing
most of his time in solitude or retirement and engaging in devotional
exercises. It was presumably a life similar to that which he describes in The Beginning of Guidance,29and which is based on a rule similar to that of Christian monastic
communities. Many stories –most of them perhaps apocryphal– are told of his
residence in Damascus. It seems likely, however, that he was unable to conceal
his identity altogether, and that many serious-minded persons in Damascus took
advantage of the presence of this great scholar among them. This may be why, in
order to be alone, he would go up the minaret of the mosque at Damascus and
shut himself in for the whole day.

In his
own later account of this time30 he says he went on to Jerusalem, and he must
have spent some days or weeks there, engaged in solitary prayer and meditation
in the Dome of the Rock, the site of Solomon’s temple and the alleged site of
Abraham’s sacrifice of his son and of Muhammad’s miraculous night-journey to
heaven. From Jerusalem he decided to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. On the way
he prayed at the tomb of Abraham at Hebron and that of Muhammad at Medina.
“Then”, his account continues, “my concerns and the appeals of my children drew
me to my homeland, and I went back, after I had been the furthest of mortals
from returning.” He still cultivated solitude, but found it difficult to secure
the peace he desired, for distractions were many.

Nevertheless,
he persevered in his religious exercises, and always returned from his
distractions to his quest for inner peace and illumination. At this stage he
continued, he says, for ten years. A deeper understanding came to him of the
principles of religion, and he was convinced that the way of life he was
following was the truest and highest.

In this
later autobiographical account there are many difficulties. From soon after his
death there have been widely divergent views about the details of his
movements. Some of the early biographical notices say that he spent ten years
in Syria, having returned there after his pilgrimage to Mecca. Now it seems
probable that he returned to Damascus, and that he regards his pilgrimage and
his visit to Jerusalem as belonging to his Damascus period. This is in
accordance with his account, provided that we take his phrase about the “journey
to the Hijaz” to mean a journey to Mecca and back to Damascus; this seems to be
a reasonable interpretation. It is practically certain, however, that he did
not spend ten years at Damascus. His own words do not necessitate it; indeed,
they suggest that he returned to his “homeland” not long after his pilgrimage;
the word thumma, “then”, seems to
indicate an interval but not an unduly long one. He is reported to have made
the pilgrimage in 489 (November-December 1096),31 and also to have been
encountered in Baghdad about June I097.32 There seems to be no ground for
rejecting the first of these dates, and the second fits in well with most of
the relevant facts. The chief remaining difficulty is that al-Ghazali himself
speaks of being “nearly two years” at Damascus, while, if we accept this second
date, he cannot have been there more than eighteen months-from November 1095 to
June 1097-even if the time spent on the pilgrimage is counted in; it seems
best, however, to accept the date and to assume that al-Ghazali used the phrase
“nearly two years” somewhat loosely. His reference to “ten years” will then be
to the whole time from his departure from Baghdad to his making arrangements
for a return to teaching at Nishapur (which actually took place in July 1106).
A subordinate reason for thinking he did not spend ten years in Damascus is
that the activity of the Crusaders was beginning, Jerusalem falling to them in
July 1099, and there are no signs of al-Ghazali being affected by the Crusades.

It has
often been asserted that he paid a visit to Egypt from Damascus. The dating
which has just been argued for leaves time for only the briefest of visits. It
is certainly possible that there was such a visit on the way to or from Mecca.
If it took place, however, it can have been little more than an incident of the
journey, and the absence of any mention of it in Deliverance from Error indicates that it had no spiritual
significance for al-Ghazali.

Another question which might be raised is what al-Ghazali meant by
“homeland” (watan). Was it Iraq or
Khurasan? He spoke of the excellence of the educational trusts in Iraq in
connection with his arrangements for his children. It is a generally accepted
fact, however, that he spent some time in his native town of Tus before returning
to teaching at the not very distant Nishapur. Since he is not mentioned in the
report of reactions in Baghdad to the fall of Jerusalem in 1099, it has been
argued that he had already left.33 Though this argument is not conclusive, it
is likely that he went to Tus about this time (passing through Hamadhan on the
way),34 for some of the biographers place a stay of several years in Tus before
his return to teaching in 1106. Here he lived a somewhat monastic life, but he
also established a hostel or convent (khangdh)
and permitted disciples to share his life; he also discoursed to them on
the subjects treated in The Revival of
the Religious Sciences. The names are known of several men who became his
disciples at Tus.35

By way
of summarizing the above discussions the following brief account of his
movements from 1095 to 1106 might be given. On leaving Baghdad in November 1095
al-Ghazali proceeded to Damascus and lived quietly there. Towards the end of
1096 he went to Jerusalem. During the months of November and December 1096 be
was engaged in the pilgrimage, perhaps visiting Alexandria on the way. He went
back to Damascus, but not later than June 1097 returned to Baghdad. He spent
some time there, but possibly about 1099 returned to his native town of Tus,
and founded a small institution for the cultivation of the religious life. In
1105 or early in 1106 Fakhr-al-Mulk, the son of Nizam-al-Mulk, who had now
become vizier of the Seljuq prince Sanjar, governor of Khurasan, prevailed upon
al-Ghazali to accept a post-presumably the chief professorship at the Nizamiyya
college at Nishapur. There he took up his duties in July or August 1106. This was the eleventh month of the
Islamic year 499; and al-Ghazali was influenced by a Tradition to the effect
that at the beginning of each century the Islamic community would have a
“renewer” of religion, since his friends insisted that he was to be the
“renewer” for the new century.36

There
is not much more of the story to tell. Al-Ghazali continued teaching at
Nishapur for at least three years. A book on legal theory, commonly known as
the Mustasfa and apparently
containing his lectures at Nishapur, was completed in August 1109.37 It –was
perhaps a little earlier that he wrote his autobiographical work, Deliverance from Error, since he was
still teaching at Nishapur when he wrote it. At some date after August 1109he once more gave up teaching and retired to his native town of
Tus. The reason for this retirement we can only conjecture. While personal
difficulties of the kind which led to his withdrawal from Baghdad cannot be
excluded, it is possible that he retired because of failing health and the
beginning of the illness which led to his death on December 18th, 1111. It may well be that he did not return to Tus until 1110 or early 1111;a reference to a
man who studied law with him at Tus seems
to refer to this period, if the source has not confused Nishapur and Tus. 38
Even if his retirement was due to ill-health he must still have been able to
write, since he appears to have completed a small book less than a fortnight
before he died 39 On the day of his death, his brother Ahmad related, he made
his ablutions and performed the dawn worship; he then asked for his shroud,
took it, kissed it and laid it on his eyes with the words, “Obediently I enter
into the presence of the King”; then he stretched out his feet, faced the qibla (the direction of Mecca), and
before daybreak was dead.40

The
book he completed just before his death has the title, The Restraining of the Commonalty from the Science of Theology, and
it is worth looking for a moment at its contents. It purports to be a reply to
a questioner. “You have asked me about the Traditions which the ignorant and
erring Hashwiyya (a sect or tendency) imagine to necessitate anthropomorphism;
for they believe that God has a form, a hand, a mouth, a foot, that he comes
down, moves his position, sits on the throne, and so on, in accordance with the
literal meaning of the Traditions; they also claim that their belief is that of
the fathers (salaf); so you want me
to explain what is the belief of the fathers and to show what the ordinary man
must believe about these Traditions.”4i The first chapter deals with the true
position of the fathers concerning the Traditions in question, and maintains
that according to the fathers the ordinary man has seven duties with regard to
these anthropomorphic conceptions: he must realize that they do not imply that
God is corporeal; he must believe them since they come from God (in the case of
Qur’anic conceptions) or from Muhammad; he must realize his own inability to
understand them positively; he must not ask about them, or try to explain them
by using other words, or even puzzle over them in his own mind, but must accept
the views of those who have knowledge of such matters. The second chapter deals
with the truth of the doctrine of the fathers, and proves it both by reason and
from Tradition; the general rational proof makes the following points: the
Prophet was best informed about the position of man with regard to the future
life; he passed on to mankind all that was revealed to him; the closest
Companions were best informed about the meaning of his words; these discouraged
men from investigating the conceptions further. The third chapter deals with
miscellaneous questions, ending up with a statement of the six grades of
belief: belief after strict proof, complete at every step; belief after proof
based on premisses not strictly proved but generally accepted by scholars;
belief based on rhetorical proofs; belief in the statement of a trustworthy
person; belief in a statement made in circumstances generally accepted as
satisfactory; belief in a statement because one wants to believe it without
considering if the informant is trustworthy.

There
is much in this little book which is worthy of careful study, and all that can
be done here is to notice some points relevant to present concerns. Firstly, it
is directed against people whom al-Ghazali calls Hashwiyya, and these are
presumably Hanbalites and TraditioniSts,42 and perhaps also the Karramites.
Secondly, one of the main concerns of the book is to avoid anthropomorphism (tashbih) or the literal interpretation
of such expressions as “the hand of God”; yet at the same time al-Ghazali wants
ordinary men to accept these expressions with simple faith without engaging in
rational discussion of them. This is his programme of a via media which he sketches briefly in The Niche for Lights; 43he seeks to avoid a literal
interpretation which implies corporeality in God and an allegorical
interpretation which abandons the scriptural conception. Thirdly, the book is
presumably directed to scholars and theologians, and there is no suggestion of a degree of
understanding beyond theirs, though nothing to exclude various levels of
understanding among them.

It is important to notice these points. It is still often stated or
assumed that there was a closing phase in al-Ghazali’s life when he abandoned
Ash’arism and became a Neoplatonist. This book, completed a few days before his
death, shows him thinking and arguing essentially as an Ash’arite; even if he
had earlier gone beyond Ash’arism in some of his speculations (such as those
about the nature of prophethood and the “immediate experience” of the mystics),
he has not abandoned any Islamic dogma or any of the central positions of
Ash’arism. From this it follows that works of a Neoplatonic character ascribed
to al-Ghazali must be regarded as spurious. The only possible exception to this
is, if it can be shown that a specific work was written between about 1091 and
1096, which is the time when his enthusiasm for philosophy was greatest. To
this period belongs a work on ethics mainly from the standpoint of Greek
philosophy which is genuine at least in part, but to which he never refers in
his later books44-presumably because
he came to think about ethical questions more in traditional Islamic terms.
That any other of the works of doubtful authenticity can be ascribed to him at
this period has not yet been shown. The careful study of dates by Maurice
Bouyges, however, seems to have cut the ground from the idea that he turned to
Neoplatonism in his closing years. Even the tendency to treat ordinary men
differently from scholars--which might suggest that he was concealing esoteric
views-is to be found in his thoroughly Ash’arite work on dogmatics, The Golden Mean in Belief 45

4 “THE REVIVAL OF
THE RELIGIOUS SCIENCES”

It is
universally acknowledged that al-Ghazali’s greatest work is The Revival of the Religious Sciences. It is
by far the lengthiest, usually occupying four volumes of some fifteen
hundred large pages. A complete English translation would probably have at
least two million words. This great work belongs to his period as a Sufi. A
small part of it, known as The Epistle
from Jerusalem, was probably composed separately during his visit to
Jerusalem in 1096, and it may be that the work as a whole was not conceived
till later. He would require time to settle down after the crisis of 1095
before he could contemplate such a work. It doubtless took several years to
compose, though it has to be remembered that Arabic can be written almost as
fast as shorthand and that al-Ghazali appears to have been a fast worker.
Various literary problems connected .with it have not yet been adequately studied-whether
it was written in order as it stands, or whether some portions (such as the
beginning of the third quarter) are later additions; how it is related to the
shorter abbreviation known as The Book of
the Forty and to the longer Persian abridgement, The Alchemy o f Happiness. Clearly any attempt to assess
al-Ghazali’s achievement must pay considerable attention to this work.

The Revival is divided into four
“quarters”, and each of these into ten books.46 The first quarter is entitled
“matters of service (sc. of God)” or, as we might say, “cult practices”. The
first book, as has been mentioned earlier, deals with knowledge or science, and
is doubtless intended as an introduction to the whole. The seven chapters into
which it is divided deal with a number of different topics, but the main
concern is to indicate which subjects of study or “sciences” are of importance
for a devout Muslim, and in what measure. In various places there occur the
criticisms of the scholar-jurists of the day, which have already been noted.
The second book is about the basic principles of the creed, and contains: (a)
an elaboration of the Confession of Faith “I bear witness that there is no god
but God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God”; (b) a discussion of education in
matters of doctrine; (c) a statement of Islamic doctrine in four sections, each
with ten points; (d) a discussion of the relation between faith and Islam, that
is, between being a believer and being a Muslim. In one sense this is still
introductory material, but in another sense the Confession of Faith might be
regarded as a cult practice.

The
remaining eight books of the first quarter deal with: ritual purity (ablutions
before worship, etc.), formal prayers or worship, tithing, fasting, the
pilgrimage to Mecca, the recitation of the Qur’an, private prayer, and
supererogatory and extracanonical devotions. Each practice is usually
introduced by Qur’anic verses and Traditions justifying it, and by sayings of
Muhammad and devout Muslims advocating and praising it. How to carry it out is
explained in very great detail-some of this can be very surprising to Western
students not accustomed to a legalistic outlook in matters of religious
practice. Al-Ghazali, however, is always concerned not merely that a man’s
external practice should be flawless, but that he should also have the
appropriate inner attitudes and understand something of the deeper reasons for
what he does. In short, al-Ghazali looks upon the external practices as means
by which a man becomes “near to God” and prepares himself for the life of the
world to come.

The
second quarter is entitled “customs” and deals with the external aspects of
ordinary life outside the practice of the cult. For the Muslim practically all
the matters dealt with come within the sphere of the revealed law or Shani’a,
though we should classify some as ethical, some as legal and some as questions
of etiquette. There are books about eating and drinking, marriage, earning one
‘living and engaging in business, relations with friends and relatives, the
life of retirement, travelling, and the use of music. One book entitled “Of the
lawful and unlawful” is really about questions of conscience. Another might be
said to be about reforming society and improving its tone. The last book is a
word-picture of Muhammad as the exemplar of all the qualities extolled in the
earlier books. Though there is much “secular” detail in this quarter,
al-Ghazali never loses sight of the contribution of the things he discusses to
man’s spiritual growth.

The last two quarters deal
explicitly with man’s inner life, and are entitled respectively “things leading
to destruction” and “things leading to salvation” or, as we might say “vices”
and “virtues”. The first book of the third quarter is an introductory account
of “the mysteries of the heart”, and is followed by a book dealing with the
improvement of the character in a general way. Then come books on the control
of the appetites for food and sexual intercourse, on the weaknesses of the
tongue, on anger, on worldliness, on avarice, on hypocrisy and love of fame, on
pride and vanity, and on self-deception. The books of the fourth quarter are
respectively on repentance, on patience and gratitude (to God), on fear and
hope, on poverty and self-discipline, on asserting God’s unity and trusting in
him, on love (for God) and approval (of his decrees), on sincerity and purity
of intention, on self-examination, on meditation, and on death and the life to
come. Thus the
second half of The Revival is not
unlike many Christian devo­tional manuals and spiritual guides, such as the Introduc­tion to the Devout Life of
Saint Francois de Sales.

The importance of all this is
that it shows us that for al-Ghazali sufism meant much more than the
cultivation of ecstatic states. He was constantly aware of this life as a
preparation for the life to come. Since the prelude of the life to come was the
Last judgement, he was very much concerned with the improvement of character.
Though he had some experience of mystical ecstasy, he appears never to have
sought this for its own sake but only as supporting and facilitating the
improvement of character and as leading to a higher degree of reward in the
life to come (since he believed in degrees of reward in Paradise). This is very
relevant to the assessment of his achievement.

VII

THE INTELLECTUAL
BASIS OF THE
“REVIVED” COMMUNITY

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Any attempt to discuss the whole
range of al-Ghazali's thought in The
Revival of the Religious Sciences would lead too far away from the specific
concern of the present study. It seems possible, however, to isolate certain
points which are relevant to the place and function of the class of
intellectuals in Islamic society. Since part of what al-Ghazali does is to
suggest the conception of a new and higher kind of knowledge, it will be
necessary to look again at the relations of Islamic conceptions of knowledge to
the class of intellectuals.

VII

THE INTELLECTUAL BASIS OF THE
“REVIVED” COMMUNITY

1 THE INTELLECTUAL CLASS AND
THE CONCEPTION OF KNOWLEDGE

ONE of the general principles underlying this book is
that there is a parallelism between the function of the intellectual class in
society and the function of intellect in the life of the individual and of
society. The ideas which the intellect employs help to direct our activity,
both when we are responding to a change in the circumstances of our lives and
when we are maintaining a steady way of life in stable circumstances.1 In
general, the intellectuals are the bearers of the ideas through which a society
directs its activity. They ensure that the ideas are transmitted from
generation to generation, and remain operative in the society. Where there are
outward changes in the life of a society, it is usually desirable that there
should be an ideational change to direct the fresh adjustments of practice to
the changed circumstances. Sometimes, in societies where there is an official
intellectual class, it may happen that this class has become insensitive to the
impact of changed circumstances on the ordinary man and that it fails to make
the necessary adaptation of ideas; in such a case attempts will be made by
persons outside the intellectual class to adapt the ideation of the society.
There is, of course, no necessity that the attempts to modify and adapt ideas
should be successful, whether made by official intellectuals or by others. A
process of trial and error, sometimes lengthy, is usually required before a
satisfactory modification of ideas is found. What is true is that, until a
satisfactory modification is found, men are dissatisfied with life in their
society, and this dissatisfaction exerts a constant pressure to seek more
adequate ideation.

It has usually been found in
practice that it is desirable that the intellectuals should be a distinct and
autonomous class. This is in contrast to Plato, who thought that in the ideal
state there should be a single class of philosopher-kings, combining the
functions of rulers and intellectuals. The weaknesses of human nature, however,
seem to exclude this. The ruler who is also the bearer of ideation is
constantly under the temptation to modify the ideation in order to facilitate
his own immediate problems in ruling, regardless of the long term interests of
the society as a whole.2 Ideally, it would seem, the ruling institution and the
intellectuals should be parallel, and the intellectuals should be autonomous,
that is, able to formulate their ideational systems independently of the
rulers, or at least without undue pressure from the rulers. At the same time,
of course, the ideational systems must be relevant to the interests and
problems of the rulers. A proper balance between rulers and intellectuals is
always difficult to achieve. Many of the troubles of the Islamic world can be
traced to the rulers' domination of the intellectuals and the latter's
subservience to the rulers.

That the life of a society is
directed by its ideas is a fact, whatever theory the society holds about the
nature and function of ideas. Yet theories about ideas or about knowledge have
a certain influence on the life of the society-and most actual theories are
very inadequate accounts of the complexity of the phenomena. Thus, for a time
sections of Western society took the naive view that men acted according to a
set of “rational” ideas, until experience showed that this was often not the
case; then certain sections rushed to the opposite error of thinking that ideas
had no influence at all on actual life. Through all this, however, the ideation
of Western society has been fulfilling the normal function of ideation in a
society.

In Islamic society the
development of the intellectual class has been influenced in detail by the
specific Islamic or perhaps rather Arabic conception of knowledge (‘ilm).
Knowledge is thought of as being contained in propositions formulated by
outstanding men. In earlier days there were wise men and poets; then came the
prophet Muhammad. The knowledge contained in these propositions is handed on by
the simple transmission of the words in the propositions. This need not be taken
to imply that there is nothing beyond the words, or that someone who can repeat
the words perfectly has fully entered into the knowledge or wisdom of those who
first formulated the propositions. It may be held that there is something
beyond the words, but this can only be reached by meditating on the words. If
this is so, knowledge cannot altogether be transmitted, but such transmission
of it as is possible is effected by transmitting the form of words in which it
was originally expressed. It follows that the handing on of the knowledge or
ideation which is the basis of the Islamic community is achieved by learning by
heart the Qur'an and the Traditions about the sayings and acts of Muhammad.
Great insistence will be placed on verbal accuracy, even in respect of
secondary reporters of Traditions. Thus the Arabic-Islamic conception of
knowledge colours the whole of Islamic education.

A corollary of this conception of
knowledge is that the only real knowledge is that of a few outstanding men. In
respect of essential religious matters Muhammad is, for the Islamic community,
the last of such outstanding men, and it has, therefore, no knowledge
subsequent to the Qur'an and the Traditions, except in the peripheral spheres
of legal and mystical conceptions. This seems to be a reflection of the static
character of Arabian tribal society. There the highest wisdom was in keeping to
the “beaten path” or sunna trodden by
one's ancestors.

This conception of Muhammad as
having given the latest and fullest expression of wisdom available to Islamic
man made it difficult for the intellectuals to adapt Islamic ideation to the
rapidly changing circumstances of the nascent Islamic empire. Indeed, they
could only perform their function by pretending that they were not making changes.
Despite this handicap they performed the stupendous task of adapting the
ideation originally designed for the little state of Muhammad's lifetime to the
needs of a vast empire. This result was achieved by adapting or inventing
sayings of Muhammad, and then developing a critique of such sayings to
distinguish “sound” Traditions from. unsound. By about 85o a corpus of “sound”
Traditions had been formed and stabilized; in effect, “sound” meant what was
appropriate to the circumstances of the ninth-century empire and was approved
by the main body of intellectuals. The fictive idea that all this came from
Muhammad was universally accepted, and the conception of the unchanging
character of Islamic knowledge thereby given deeper roots. Up to this point the
achievement of the intellectuals was impressive, but they had made it even more
difficult for their successors to adapt Islamic ideation to the needs of later
centuries. It was no longer to be possible to invent fresh sayings of Muhammad,
for the corpus of “sound” Traditions had been closed. Ingenuity could still
find ways of making ideational modifications, but the difficulties were
greater, and so it was more likely that there would be failures to achieve
satisfactory modifications.

While the corpus of Traditions
was reaching stability, a new and complicating element appeared, Greek
philosophy. This has already been discussed from various angles in this book,
but it may now be looked on from a fresh perspective, as a new conception of
the nature of knowledge. Part of the interest in Greek philosophy among Muslims
rose from the need to defend Islamic doctrine against non-Muslims, and in
particular against Christian inhabitants of the caliphate who had received a
philosophical training. Against such persons arguments based on the Qur'an and
Traditions were useless; first of all, reasons had to be given for accepting
the authority of these scriptures. This led to the development of a great work
of apologetics at various levels, for arguments had always to be based on what
the opponents were prepared to accept or concede. Out of such apologetics arose
a new conception of knowledge. It seemed clear that the man who could give
reasons for a doctrine he believed was superior to a man who merely held the
doctrine, but could give no reasons for it. The former came to be the knower or
man of knowledge par excellence--’alim, plural
‘ulama', participle used as a noun
from the root of ‘ilm, knowledge; it
is anglicized as ulema, and rendered
in this book by “scholar-jurists”. Naturally there was resistance to this new
conception of knowledge. The philosophical or rational theology incorporating
it, known as kalam, was accepted by
many theologians (known as mutakallimun) and
jurists. The chief group of those who opposed eventually came to be the
Hanbalites, the followers of the legal rite of Ahmad ibn-Hanbal.

In the two hundred
years or so between the stabilization of Tradition and the student days of
al-Ghazali the ideational system of Islam had become ossified, and, parallel to
this, something had gone wrong with the class of intellectuals. It would be
rash to attempt a final pronouncement on matters which have not been fully
investigated, but suggestions may be made about factors which may have
contributed to the end-result.

(a)The conception of knowledge (or ideation) as static, as
just noted, made it difficult for the intellectuals to effect ideational
changes explicitly. It seems probable, too, that several groups of people had
an interest in maintaining the pretence that nothing had changed. The war-lords
who came to rule the lands of the caliphate during this period were content
with the actuality of power, and may have thought that it made retention of
power easier if the masses still regarded the caliph as supreme. The caliph and
his supporters, too, were probably anxious to keep in being a semblance of the
old system, in the hope that one day the caliph might sally out from this
bastion to recover the power he had lost.

(b) The great increase in the
extent of the ideational basis of Islamic society and the corresponding
increase in the time required to gain a mastery of it meant that the class of
intellectuals had become more of a closed corporation. There still seem to have
been lectures in mosques which anyone might attend; but the young man who
wanted to make a career for himself as an intellectual and rise to a judgeship
or professorship had to study hard for many years and also to travel widely so
as to sit under some of the most distinguished scholars. Thus the intellectuals
tended to be more marked off from ordinary men, and to be a little jealous of
their privileges as a distinct group. They also tended to be much concerned
with advancement within the series of posts open to them, to study those parts
of learning in which they could show off to their fellows their intellectual
abilities, and in general to have a worldly outlook.

(c) The tendency to worldliness
was strengthened by the weakness of the intellectuals as a class over against
the rulers. This goes back at least to the Inquisition of 833-849,3 where it
had been demonstrated that only a handful of intellectuals were prepared to
resist coercion by the rulers. Under the Buwayhid sultans or war-lords, who
were Shiites, the position of the mainly Sunnite intellectuals was even less
attractive. It is likely that their growing interest in external and worldly
rewards was in part a compensation for their declining importance in the
community.

(d) The greater
“intellectualism”, or more academic attitude, of the intellectuals is perhaps
more a reflection of the above factors than an independent factor parallel to
them. Intellectual elaboration where there are no foreseeable practical
consequences is a way in which the intellectual finds compensation for
frustration in his efforts in other directions. Such intellectualism may also
be called scholastic in the sense that it is based on concepts derived by a
process of abstraction from the living experience of an earlier generation
without being filled out by reference to fresh contemporary experience.

While these four factors suggest
something of what was happening to the intellectuals in the tenth and eleventh
centuries new insights were developing outside the official intellectual class
among the sufis or mystics. To be exact, a number of the sufis were members of
the official intellectual class; but they had to regard their discipline as a
new one to be cultivated privately, as it were, and not added to the official
curriculum. Such at least is the general impression given by the sources,
though the matter requires further investigation. It would seem, too, that it
was because of the stability of Tradition and the difficulty of introducing
modifications that Sufism had to be treated as something new and not a modification of something old. The Islamic mind is
fond of dividing things into categories and treating of each category in
isolation; and this habit of mind appears to have been used to make a place for
the insights of Sufism in the intellectual life of Islam.

Sufism was only new, of course, as a distinct
discipline, parallel to theology, jurisprudence and the other “Islamic
sciences”-a kind of extra in which a man might specialize if he so desired. In
itself it claimed to be founded on Qur'an and Tradition. Unfortunately its
subject-matter was not such as to be kept in a watertight compartment; its
ethics, for example, frequently overlapped the ethical aspects of the Shari'a,
which were also the concern of jurisprudence. This was one of the problems
al-Ghazali tried to solve.

2 THE NEW “INTELLECTUAL
STRUCTURE” OF THE COMMUNITY

Since al-Ghazali's chief work is The Revival of the Religious Sciences, it
is important for an appreciation of his whole career to know what he meant by
“revival”. From his criticisms of the official intellectuals we have learned
that he regarded the religious sciences, as these were expounded in his time,
as contributing very little to a man's attainment of future bliss; and this
last he assumed to be the true end of human life. The sciences were being
pursued in an academic fashion that was out of touch with the needs of the
ordinary man in the contemporary world. Al-Ghazali was therefore trying to
rescue the sciences from this condition. What, in effect, he does in the
earlier part of The Revival is to
show that the prescriptions of the Shari'a, taken in considerable detail, can
be made the foundation of a meaningful life, that is, as he sees it, a life of
preparation for the world to come. This general conception is also expounded
more briefly in various books written subsequently to The Revival, as already noted, and there are strong reasons for
thinking that al-Ghazali maintained this general position to the end of his
life.

To speak of making the system of
ideas and practices of which the official intellectual class were the bearers
relevant to contemporary needs involves a certain assumption, namely, an
assessment of contemporary needs in accordance with the sufistic outlook. This
emphasized the individual's pursuit of uprightness as the supreme end in life,
since in this way he attained to the bliss of Paradise, which was his ultimate
end. At the same time there was implicit in the sufistic outlook an abandonment
of the attempt to make the whole society an upright society-except in so far as
the society was changed by the force of the example of the Sufis. Once much of
the texture of social life was fixed by a stabilized Shari'a, and once
political life was largely determined either by an autocratic caliph and his
court (following the principles of Persian statecraft) or by war-lords pursuing
their own interests, the ordinary man required to have some such religious aim
set before him. The failure of the official bearers of religious truth was that
they did not see this, while the fresh insight of the Sufis was precisely this.
The sufis, however, even when they were members of the official intellectual
class and lectured on such subjects as jurisprudence, seem to have kept their
Sufism in a separate compartment. Al-Qushayri (d. 1072 in Tus), though a Shafi’ite
jurist, in his well-known Epistle on
Sufism covers only the ground of the second half of The Revival and has no discussion of the matters in the first half.
It is a distinctive feature of the work of al-Ghazali that he links up the
details of the Shari'a with the insights of the Sufis.

As a result of his efforts in
this direction al-Ghazali comes to hold a doctrine of three possible
intellectual or cognitive conditions in which a man may be. The lowest is that
of faith (iman), and at this stage a man
accepts the doctrines of the creed on the authority of other persons, such as
parents and teachers. This taqlid or
“following the authority of others” may also be described as “naive belief”,
since the man may not be aware of his dependence on others, and may not have
thought of asking how he comes to believe what he believes. (There are other
instances-in law and in Batinite theory-where taqlid is conscious.) The second degree is that of knowledge or
science (‘ilm), where a man is able to give reasons for what he believes. This
is the degree of the scholar-jurists or ulema, the official intellectual class;
and it is in line with al-Ghazali's criticisms of them that he places them in
the middle degree and not in the highest. The third and highest degree in the
usual account is that of insight or immediate experience (dhawq, literally “taste”), and it is here of course that the Sufis
are placed.4

It was apparently
only gradually that al-Ghazali came to place immediate experience above
rational knowledge. There are passages in The
Revival where he seems to suggest that immediate experience and academic
(rational) study are parallel roads to truth, leading to the same result. Thus he writes: “The
knowledge of the method of employing and profiting from (sc. such knowledge as
one already has) sometimes comes through a divine light in the heart arising
from the natural disposition, as in the case of the prophets ... and sometimes
-and this is more usual-comes from study and discipline”5 This comes from Book
39 on “Meditation”; and it is perhaps significant that this material is not
represented in the Book of the Forty, although
that is approximately a summary of The
Revival, divided into forty sections corresponding roughly to the forty
books of the latter. On the other hand, the conception of the three
levels-faith, knowledge, and immediate experience-is clearly formulated in the Book of the Forty.6 It would seem,
therefore, that al-Ghazali slowly approached this conception of the three
grades in the course of writing The
Revival; but that, once he had clearly formulated it, lie clung to it. It
was doubtless the reflection of his own deepening mystical experiences, in
which he came to feel that he now understood things he had not properly
understood before.

The conception of the three
grades implied that there was a class above that of the scholar-jurists or
official intellectuals. This was the view of the sufis themselves at least as
early as the time of Abu-Nasr as-Sarraj (d. 988),7 who spoke of three groups of
people-worldlings, religious and elect; although these are not the same as
al-Ghazali's three groups, they likewise imply the superiority of the sufis. An
extreme expression of this belief in the superiority of the sufis is to be seen
in the doctrine that at any given time the most saintly sufi is the qutb or axis who supports the whole
order of the universe, so that without him it would be destroyed.8 While
al-Ghazali did not go so far as to advocate that the sufis should be
“officially” recognized as an intellectual class above the scholar-jurists-such
recognition would have seemed to him an undesirable concession to
worldliness-he gave them new and solid reasons for thinking they were such a
superior class, namely, in their possession of a superior function. They have
the immediate experience which gives insight, and their insight is the highest
ideational guide of the community.

In a sense there is also implicit
in al-Ghazali's conception of the three grades an acknowledgement of the
existence of a source of wisdom later in time than Muhammad and capable of
producing modifications of Islamic ideation suited to bringing about an
adaptation to contemporary circumstances. Though this is implicit, however,
al-Ghazali himself was unaware of the implication. Far from asserting it
explicitly he repeatedly insisted (chiefly against the Batinites) that Muhammad
was the supreme fount of wisdom for the community. Most of the jurists held
that adaptation of the Shari'a to contemporary situations was to be achieved by
intellectual “effort” in accordance
with rational principles. Sufistic insights, however, were effecting adaptation
at a deeper level, and al-Ghazali's conception, though he did not realize the
fact, was a justification of a change that was already taking place and which
he himself brought to a consummation.

This “blind spot” is an
indication of the extent to which he had failed to work out fully his
conception of immediate experience. It has already been noted how he hesitated
before asserting that immediate experience was above rational knowledge. There
is, of course, a distinction between the two which is familiar to modern
philosophers and which is expressed by al-Ghazali with his usual clarity in Deliverance from Error.9It is the distinction between “knowledge
about” and “acquaintance with” or “experience of”. A man, as he puts it, may
have complete scientific knowledge of what health is and what drunkenness is;
but that is different from having experience of health and experience of
drunkenness by being healthy and drunk respectively. Questions are begged,
however, when this distinction is applied to the knowledge of God. Is it
possible to have knowledge about God (as distinct from a knowledge of what people say about God) without having
some experience of God? If a man, through faith in a prophet's message, has in
some measure “entered into” the experience of (the reality apprehended by) the
prophet, has he not to some extent had an experience of God? Again, why should
“knowledge about” be considered inferior? Is the man with knowledge about
drunkenness not superior to the drunk man? Is the man with a scientific (or
philosophical) knowledge of the nature of sense-perception not superior to the
man who perceives things without knowing what he is doing? Al-Ghazali, as
suggested above, seems to have generalized from his own experiences without
realizing how many other questions were involved.

It would seem, for example, that in placing
“immediate experience” above “knowledge”, al-Ghazali was presupposing that the
persons who had “immediate experience” already possessed a large measure of
“knowledge”. This was so in so far as Sufis came from the class of
scholar-jurists, as al-Ghazali himself and many leading Sufis of the previous
age had done. It seems likely, however, that among the crowds of corrupt Sufis
of whom we hear10 there was little higher education and even very sketchy
acquaintance with what al-Ghazali expected ordinary men to hold by “faith”.
Would al-Ghazali have placed the “immediate experience” of an uneducated Sufi
above the knowledge of a jurist? We who observe how wild religious enthusiasts
have been in recent centuries would be hesitant about this. Al-Ghazali had the
possibility of looking at the heresiography of al-Baghdadi (d. 1037), but it may
not have occurred to him to place the assertions of extreme sectaries on the
same level as the ecstasies of the mystics. Yet there is a real problem here.
So far as the outward form of the experience goes-that is, so far as it is
accessible to the uncommitted observer-there is nothing to show that the
insight of the Sufi saint is more true than the imaginings of the erratic
visionary. In other words, “immediate experience” requires a rational (or
theological) critique.

Al-Ghazali's failure to deal with
this problem is linked with his failure to appreciate the function of the
Shari'a in the life of the community. He appreciated it, of course, in
insisting that the observance of the Shari a must be the basis of the sufistic
life. Yet he does not fully realize that, while sufistic insight gives a deeper
meaning to the prescriptions of the Shari'a and shows the inner spirit which
ought to inform the observance of them, it is not itself the source of these
prescriptions. They are in a sense prior even to the ethical teaching of the
Sufis. Because of this priority these prescriptions are properly the
subject-matter of an independent discipline-the “science” or “knowledge” of the
scholar-jurists. This deals essentially with the outward form of the social
structure of the community, that form with which the ordinary man must have
some acquaintance by “faith”, and of which the scholar has fuller, more precise
and more systematic “knowledge”. The “immediate experience” of the Sufi is not
related to the “knowledge” of the scholar as the latter is related to the
“faith” of the ordinary man; it is a different kind of relationship. Perhaps
al-Ghazali failed to realize the problem here because, although much of his
thinking was communalistic, his conception of “immediate experience” was still
largely influenced by the individualistic thinking of the earlier Sufism. In
essence what he fails to consider is how mystical experience is to become and
remain relevant to the life of a community with a fixed social structure.

To sum up. Al-Ghazali was
striving to give expression to changes that had been taking place in Islamic
life. In insisting (as in the first half of The
Revival) that a life according to the Shari a was the necessary basis of
the sufistic life, he was carrying a process of adaptation to its completion.
In his conception of “immediate experience” he had isolated the new factor
which had appeared in the Islamic world, especially after the stabilization of
Tradition about 850, and was the source of the subsequent process of
adaptation; but he had not been successful in his theoretic account of the
factor, and he did not realize the need for controlling it.

VIII
THE ACHIEVEMENT

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

To assess the achievement of
al-Ghazali is no easy mat­ter. He undoubtedly had considerable influence in suc­ceeding
centuries, but scholars have paid little attention to the centuries between his
death and the beginnings of the European impact. What is to be said here can
therefore be no more than a tentative and provisional estimate of his
achievement. It is based on the perusal of a few well-known works and on some
obvious historical facts, but may require emendation when the various periods
have been more fully studied.

VIII
THE ACHIEVEMENT

1 THE TENSION BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

I T was seen in an earlier chapter that the tension
between theology and philosophy which al-Ghazali experienced was in part the
rivalry of different groups of men, though behind this rivalry was the question
of the relation between reason and revelation, between logical and intuitive
knowledge. By making a thorough study of philosophy al-Ghazali was seeking to
resolve this tension by deliberately exposing himself more fully to it. While
other theologians kept it at arm's length as something foreign and dangerous,
or tried to attack it without understanding it, al-Ghazali made a thorough
study of it to discover the elements of strength and truth in it and to see
whether these could be employed in the service of Sunnite Islam. He was only
able to appreciate such elements, however, because he approached it with
open-mindedness, that is, a readiness to abandon his Ash‘irite theology for
Neoplatonic philosophy, should he be convinced of the truth of the latter. The
result of his activity was considerable and had both a positive and a negative
aspect.

By the negative
aspect is to be understood the weakening of the movement of pure philosophy. It
might be thought that this could be regarded as the consequence of al-Ghazali's
book, The Inconsistency of the Philosophers;
but this is one of the points which should not be assumed without further
study. It is certain that in the heartlands of Islam, from Egypt to beyond the
Oxus, there was no great name in philosophy after Ibn-Sina; but Ibn-Sina died
in 1037, so that it is possible that pure philosophy was in decline before
al-Ghazali's attack on it. While what he attacked is not to be identified with
any philosophy cultivated by the Isma'ilites or Batinites, it may well be that
persons who had formerly professed themselves to be philosophers now turned to
Isma'ilism. Philosophy continued to be studied in the Islamic West, and
outstanding philosophers appeared like Ibn-Tufayl and Ibn-Rushd (Averroes), who
replied to the attacks of al-Ghazali. How effective their replies were need not
be decided here. Philosophy eventually declined in the Islamic West also, after
passing on something of its spirit to Europe; but this decline is due more to
the general decline of Islamic culture following on the resurgence of Christian
Spain than to theological attacks. There is indeed some irony in the fact that
al-Ghazali was best known in medieval Europe for the exposition of the views of
the Neoplatonists which he wrote as a preliminary to his Inconsistency.

If it is thus impossible to say
how much al-Ghazali's attacks contributed to the decline of philosophy, there
is no doubt about the success of the positive aspects of his work, namely, the
incorporation of parts of philosophy into Islamic theology. From this time
onwards the theologians (apart from those who rejected rational argument,
notably the Hanbalites) made use of syllogistic logic and various Greek
metaphysical conceptions. Some of the later Hanbalites even felt themselves
constrained to study syllogistic logic in order to refute it.' Theological
treatises came to have large introductory sections on logic and metaphysics,
and-more interesting-books on logic came to be written by theologians and not
philosophers. In all this al-Ghazali was the pioneer. The way may have been
prepared for him by other men such as his teacher, al-Juwayni. The times may
have been ripe for a move in this direction. Yet al-Ghazali alone made that
combined study of philosophy and theology that was necessary if the tension was
to be resolved, and endured the brunt of conservative disapproval and
criticism. For his perspicacity and courage in this he deserves the fullest
credit.

A charge that might perhaps be
brought against him is that by thus making theology philosophical he
contributed to its ossification or rigidification.2 That theology became
devitalized is clear. It is almost as clear that this devitalization went along
with a growth of the philosophical element. Once again, however, this is a
point requiring further study. There is no justification for thinking that
philosophy itself is a devitalizing agent. The source of the trouble must be in
the people who philosophize. Now these are the same class of religious
intellectuals whose worldliness al-Ghazali criticized. The first place to look for
the cause of devitalization will therefore be among the attitudes of this
class. Perhaps they were led to excess in philosophizing by the same motives
which led them to excessive study of the “differences” between the legal rites.
Al-Ghazali, the vigorous critic of this form of study, cannot be blamed for the
later development of a similar vice, even if he helped to provide the material
for it.

2 THE BATINITE CHALLENGE

Although al-Ghazali gives some
prominence in his autobiography to his refutations of Batinite views, this side
of his literary production was probably a secondary matter for him. His study
of Batinism taught him something about various aspects of Islamic life, and
brought certain emphases into his doctrinal formulations (as in his insistence
that Muhammad is the inspired leader of the community); but it did not entail
the same personal involvement as did his study of philosophy, since there is no
sign that he was ever in any way tempted to become a Batinite.

Whether his attacks on Batinism
made an important contribution to the decline and defeat of the movement is
difficult to determine. On the whole the decline would seem to be chiefly due
to many other factors -the decreasing support from the Fatimids in Egypt, and
their failure to produce in Egypt a state of affairs notably different from
that in the lands which acknowledged the ‘Abbasid caliph, the domination of the
movement by mountaineers and other relatively primitive elements of the
population and a consequent alienation of the urban masses, and perhaps
increasing contentedness under the firm rule of the Seljuqs. The fact that the
movement had to resort to the assassination of the vizier Nizam-al-Mulk in 1092
might betoken the desperation of a man who suspects he has failed. If that is so,
then the Batinite movement was declining before al-Ghazali wrote a word about
it. In any case the general function of polemical writings such as those in
question is not to persuade the opponent of his folly, but to prevent further
waverers on one's own side going over to him. In so far as al-Ghazali's books
gave confidence in themselves and in their own cause to the supporters of the
‘Abbasids and the Seljuqs, they were a part, indeed a necessary part, of the
efforts of the government against the rebels, and thus a necessary part of the
defence of Sunnite Islam.

3. THE TENSION BETWEEN THE
“ISLAMIC SCIENCES” AND SUFISM

Great as was the service al-Ghazali performed for Islam
in exposing himself to the tension between philosophy and theology, it was
surpassed-it is generally held by what he achieved by exposing himself
deliberately to the further tension between the sufistic movement and the
established “Islamic sciences”. Despite the general-and probably
justified-agreement on this matter, it is difficult to pinpoint al-Ghazali's
achievement here. There was undoubtedly tension between the sufistic movement
and official intellectuals; but at the same time several members of the
official intellectual class were themselves sufis. Some of the attacks on
Sufis, too, when examined closely, are found to be due to the critic's belief
that some of his quarry's theological doctrines
were heretical. These are indications of the complexity of the matter; but that
there was considerable tension cannot be doubted. Al-Ghazali would have liked
to expose himself to this tension in the same way as he had exposed himself to
the tension with philosophy by studying it in academic seclusion; but he came
to realize that Sufism was existential, and that he could not attain to a full understanding
of it without himself practising it as a way of life. So he made his courageous
decision to abandon his professorship.

First, then, let us consider the
influence on the sufistic movement of what he did and wrote. The most
distinctive feature of The Revival of the
Religious Sciences, as has already been seen, is the insistence that the
foundation of the sufistic life is the observance of the outward forms of
activity as prescribed in the scriptures and systematized in the “Islamic
sciences”. While we cannot suppose that a man like al-Qushayri (d. 1072), who was both a jurist and a sufi,
was lax in his outward observances, it is probable that to him and many like
him there did not seem to be much point in these observances; other sufis
abandoned them altogether. For persons who felt doubts about the outward
observances al-Ghazali argues powerfully that they have some point, and he
shows in detail what that point is. He thus made it clear that the sufistic way
of life was not an alternative to the formal Islamic observances but the
complement or consummation of them, and that it therefore presupposed them. It
seems legitimate to suppose that the expression of this attitude by al-Ghazali
would have various effects on the sufistic movement. The antinomian sections
would have to consider more seriously whether they were justified in neglecting
the formal observances. Those who observed the forms without enthusiasm would
come to a fuller insight into their importance. Those who hesitated to embrace
the sufistic way of life because they were conscious of the obligation of
observing the standard forms would realize that the practice of sufism, far
from excluding the observance of the Shari'a, presupposed it. This last point,
especially, ought to have led to a growth of the movement. At the same time it
was more fully integrated into the life of Islamic society.

The twelfth century saw the first
appearance of one of the most characteristic features of Islam as a religion,
the dervish or mystical orders, and the question should be asked, how far
al-Ghazali is responsible for their appearance. These orders may be described
as fraternities for spiritual training and discipline, and for the mutual
support of the members, and to some extent resembled the monastic orders of
Christendom. The first in time is usually reckoned to be the Qadiriyya, founded
by ‘Abd-al-Qadir al-Jilani, who died in I166. The movement for the founding of
orders gained momentum through the centuries, and a modern list gives nearly
two hundred orders, while many of these had several, partly independent,
branch-orders.3 At the beginning of the twentieth century large numbers of
Muslims of the lower classes, though not full members of the orders, were
attached to them, and found that what the austere Qur'anic worship lacked was
given to them in the dhikr of the
order; the dhikr was a form of
service or religious exercise, more sensuous than the formal prayers and
Al-Ghazali thought himself called to be the “renewer” of religion for the sixth
Islamic century, and many, perhaps most, later Muslims have considered that he
was indeed the “renewer” of this age. Some have even spoken of him as the
greatest Muslim after Muhammad. As his achievement is reviewed, it becomes
clear that he was more of a prophet than a systematizer. Yet he is not simply a
prophet, but is best described as a prophetic intellectual. He spoke to his
fellows in terms of the highest thought of his time. Above all he made the
individualistic aspect of religion intellectually respectable. It is probably
his emphasis on the individualistic outlook that has appealed to the endemic
individualism of Western scholars and gained him excessive praise; but he was
far from being a sheer individualist. In his theorizing he sometimes fails to make
explicit allowance for the communalism of the Shari'a, but he always
presupposes it, and in his practice he effects a genuine integration of
individualism and communalism. This is part of his title to greatness and of
his achievement in “renewing” Islam.

In the background of the life of
al-Ghazali we see that much real piety continues to exist in the hearts of
ordinary men despite the failure and corruption of their intellectual leaders.
In his own life we see how the revivals or reforms, which frequently but
unpredictably occur in the great religions, have their origin in the heart of a
single man.

EXCURSUSGhazali or Ghazzali

THE spelling of the nisba of the great theologian has been
for centuries a matter of dispute among scholars, and it is unlikely that we
can now reach more than a probable conclusion on the matter. Yet it is worth
while looking once again at the material.,

What may be called the standard
view-Ibn Khallikan speaks of it as the mash'hur
-is that this nisba is derived
from ghazzal, a spinner, or a vendor
of spun yarn. In support of this derivation it is noted that the practice of
deriving a nisba from a word of this
form indicating an occupation is common in Jurjan and Khwarizm. A later writer
like as-Subki adds that the theologian's father was a spinner of wool, which he
sold in his little shop.

The alternative view is that the
correct spelling is Ghazali and that it is derived from Ghazala, a village near
Tus. This is found in the earliest source, as-Sam'ani, who died only half a
century after the theologian. Unfortunately there appears to be no mention of
the village except in discussions of the nisba.
It is doubtless this fact that caused later scholars to be puzzled by the
question. The lexicographically-minded Ibn-al-Athir seems to have been the
first to advocate the spelling Ghazzali. The keenest interest in the question
was in the middle of the fourteenth century. Al-Fayyumi, who had made a special
study of al-Ghazali and compiled a lexicon of the less usual words in his
writings, alleged that a descendant in the eighth generation (through the
theologian's daughter) had told him that the family tradition was that the nisba was Ghazali from the village.
About the same time the polymath as-Safadi, besides quoting this point, said
that the form Ghazali was used by the theologian himself. As-Subki (d. 1379)
does not discuss the matter directly, but opposes these views by his allegation
that the father of the theologian was a ghazzal.
The continuing problem of this nisba
is shown by as-Sayyid al-Murtada's mention of the possibility of its
derivation from the feminine name Ghazala.

Before setting out what I believe
to be the most probable conclusion, there are some small points which may be
cleared out of the way. Firstly, even if it is true that the theologian's
father was aghazzal, that does not
explain the nisba, since it was also
attached to an earlier theologian, his uncle or grand-uncle;2 the occupation
may of course have been hereditary in the family. Secondly, the use of a nisba from an occupational name in
Jurjan and Khwarizm is only slight support for such a practice at Tus, which is
not in either of these regions, though comparatively near them. Thirdly, the
absence of mention of a village Ghazala is not in itself conclusive, since it
may have been small and unimportant, or may have disappeared; there is no
mention in Yaqut's Mu-jam al-Buldan of
a village of Khuwar in the Tabaran section of Tus, from which one of
al-Ghazali's teachers came, though several villages of this name are mentioned.3
Fourthly, the motive (mentioned by Brockelmann)4 of avoiding a name suggesting
low origin is only one of several possible motives; scholars with a
predilection for asceticism might prefer the form which indicated the poverty
of this great theologian-mystic's home .5 Moreover, it is unlikely that the
theologian himself, especially after his departure from Baghdad and adoption of
a measure of voluntary poverty, would be ashamed of his origin; while, since he
had only daughters, his descendants did not bear the name. Fifthly, the
existence of Persian poets or other persons who have or use the form Ghazzali
does not make it certain that this is how the theologian spelt it.6

With these small points disposed
of, the way is open to assert that Ghazali is the more likely form. This
assertion is based on an analogy with the principle of difficilior lectio potius. When the derivation from ghazzal is so obvious, why should
another have been put forward? Motives can, indeed, be suggested, but they are
all far from certain. On the other hand, if we suppose that the original form
was Ghazali, as the oldest source states, it is understandable that scholars,
finding this obscure and unlikely, would emend it to Ghazzali. The acceptance
of the form Ghazali as the more probable does not necessitate acceptance of the
derivation from a village of Ghazala (still less from a woman); this may be
merely the baseless conjecture of as-Sam’ani; at the same time our information
is so meagre that the existence of a village of this name cannot be ruled out
as impossible. The conclusion therefore is that, while much inevitably remains
obscure, there is a preponderance of probability in favour of Ghazali.

NOTES, CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

I

1. London, 1961; referred to in the notes as Integration.

2. The complexity of the
intelligentsia is brought out in F. Znaniecki, The Social Role of the Men of Knowledge,1940.

II

1. Cf. Integration;
also “The
Conception of the Charismatic Community in Islam”, Numen, vii.. 77-90.

5. Cf. Muhammad at
Mecca, Oxford, 1953; also
the opening chapters of Integration.

6. Cf. Integration,
102.

7. Cf. N. Daniel, Islam and the West: the Making of an Image, Edinburgh, 1960.

8. See ch. VI below.

9. But the identification of Persians
with Shi‘ite doctrines in the early period must not be exaggerated; the
identification has only been close since the sixteenth century.

10. Browne, Literary History of Persia, ii. 129-41.

10a. He is said to have written
some books in Persian, such as Kimiya'
as-Sa’dda, and appears to have written letters in Persian (Fada'il al-Anam). In Maqsad, 73ihe uses the form Kurkani (Gurgani) for Jurjan, although the
scholar Yaqut (Mu’jam al-Buldan, s.v.) says
the K form is never used in Arabic.

11. Some authorities say it ought
to be Ghazzali, the descendant of the ghazzal or spinner, but this is less
likely. Cf. 183 below.

12. Iljam; cf.
p.148 below.

13. A.
Mez, The Renaissance of Islam (Eng.
tr.), Patna, 1937, 182.

14. I have not been able to find
the source of this date 470/1077 is given, presumably independently, by Bouyges
and M. Smith.

15. Mez,191.

16. Cf. J. Pedersen, art.
“Madrasa”, IV, in EI(S). Also Subk. iii- 135-45, esp. 137. He may have
been imitating the seminaries of the sectarian Karramites and Qarmatians (cf.
Massignon, Passion, i.166); and his
aim was doubtless to counter sectarian views; cf. p. rob below.

17. We do not know where the camp
was; it presumably moved. During this period he may have travelled to Zuzan in
Afghanistan; he is said to have studied under a traditionist there (cf. SM, i.
19 f.; Subk. iv. 114).

III

1. The best
general survey is that of Richard Walzer, “Islamic Philosophy”, in S.
Radhakrishnan, History of Philosophy,
Eastern and Western, London, 1953, ii. 120-48. Older accounts, partly out
of date, are: T. J. de Boer, The History
of Philosophy in Islam, London, 1903; De Lacy O'Leary, Arabic Thought and its Place in History, London, 1929. A useful
bibliographical introduction is: P. J. de Menasce, Arabische Philosophie (Bibliographische Einführungen in das Studium
der Philosophie, 6), Bern, 1948. For the Christian translators into Arabic an
excellent compendium of information is: G. Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, vol. ii (Vatican
City, 1947), under individual names. Further information will be found in
Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and
Theology, Edinburgh, 1962, chs. 5,10, 15.Cf. also R. Walzer,
“New Light on the Arabic translations of Aristotle”, Oriens, vi. (1953), 91-142.

5. Full name: Abu-Yusuf Ya’qub
ibn-Is'haq of the Arab tribe of Kinda. The sources for his life are examined by
Muhammad ‘Abd-al-Hadi Abu-Rida, Al-Kindi
wa-Falsafatu-hu, also printed as introduction to Rasa'il al-Kindi al-Falsafiyya (both Cairo, 1950/1369). The chief
Arabic biographical sources and modern treatments are listed under the name of
each author in GAL and GALS. There are notices of the chief
writers in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, second
edition in progress. Most of the philosophers in the following list are treated
in Meyerhof, “Von Alexandrien ...”, 413-27.

8. For the biography see A. J.
Arberry, “Avicenna: His Life and Times”, in G. M. Wickens (ed.), Avicenna: Scientist and Philosopher, London,
1952, 9-28.

9. J. Schacht and M. Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy between
Ibn Butlan of Baghdad and Ibn Ridwan of Cairo, Cairo, 1937. A brief notice
of this is given by Schacht in ZDMG, 90
(1936), 526-45.

23. For some support of the view that al-Farabi was not a Shi‘ite cf. F.
M. Najjar, “Farabi's Political Philosophy and Shi’ism” (Studia Islamica, xiv. 57-72). For the Shi‘ite conception of the
leader see Integration, 104-10

24. K. al-Madina al-Fidila, ed. Fr. Dieterici, Leiden, 1895, 58 f.; cf. Siyasat, 49 f. To be consistent with other parts of this study, 'agl has been translated “reason”,
though in this context “intellect” would be more suitable; a discussion of the
exact meaning of the various terms is beyond our present scope, but a lucid
exposition of the matter will be found in F(azlur-) Rahman, Prophecy in Islam, London, 1958, ch. i. For the word translated
“prudent”, muta'aqqil, cf. Risala f1-'l-’Aq1, 7. 5 and Fustil al-Madani, p. 84

28. K. an-Najat, 304-6. Cf. Louis Gardet, La Pensie religieuse d'Avicenne, Paris, 1951,125-8; Fazlur-Rahman, Prophecy, 30-64, gives a useful
exposition, but does not distinguish the views of al-Farabi and Avicenna.
Fazlur-Rahman has done excellent work in tracing the Hellenistic sources of
Islamic philosophy, and it is unfortunate that he has mistakenly attacked
Gardet at one or two points and failed to realize that their work is
complementary and not contradictory. Besides asking about the source of a view
we must also ask about the motive for adopting it and its relation to the
contemporary historical situation. Al-Ghazali, summarizing the views of the
philosophers in Maqasid, 319 f., is
close to Avicenna, and mentions the scholar-jurists as mediating between the
prophet and the ordinary people.

32. The passage quoted in SM, i. 9 (and translated by M. Smith, Al-Ghalali,14 f.) implies that he went
to a sufi teacher in Tus before 1077. On
the other hand, there is nothing to suggest that familiarity with the sceptical
arguments of the Batinites had anything to do with his scepticism.

33. Tahdhib al-Akhlaq, Cairo, 19111/1329,
11.

34. In the allegory of the cave in the Republic, ordinary men argue about mere shadows.

35. The argument received much
attention from theologians in the century before al-Ghazali, and had been
developed with greater subtlety than the above summary suggests. Cf.
al-Baqillani (d. 1013), K. al-Bayan (“Miracle
and Magic: a treatise on the nature of the apologetic miracle and its
differentiation from charisms, trickery, divination, magic and spells”), ed. R.
J. McCarthy, Beirut, 1958.

36. Maqaaid, 3

37. Tahafut, 352 fi. and frequently.

38. Maqasid, 320.

39. Najat,168; cf. Avicenna's
Psychology, 37.

40. Tahafut,177.

41. Goldziher has collected many instances of this attitude scattered
over several centuries (see “Stellung” in Bibliography).

42. Faith and Practice, 55 (126).

43. Bouyges, Chronologie, 2; he
attended a special course of lectures in June 1093 and was present when the oath was taken to the new caliph
al-Musta'hir in Feb. 1094(from Ibn-al-Athir,etc.). 44. Faith and Practice, 30 (85). 45. Tahafut al-Falasifa.

46. Bouyges, Chronologie, 23-47. Tahafut, 180. 5; cf. 339

48. Ibid. (sections) 4, 5, 9, 10, II, 12)
18. 49. Ibid. p.13.

50. In The Golden Mean in Belief, ad init., al-Ghazali says: reason and
revelation are complementary; reason is like human sight and revelation like
the sun. This was probably written soon after The Inconsistency of the Philosophers, and may be the proposed work
on The Foundations of Belief (Qawa'id
al-’Aqa'id) mentioned there (p. 78).

58. Cf. Mi’yar, 37 f., where he points out how
the (philosophers') logical definition of “universal” (kulli) gives a superior solution of a point of legal
interpretation. In Maqasid, 43, he
shows an awareness of the logical weaknesses of the theologians.

59. Faith and Practice, 32-43 (90-107).

6o. Mi yar, ad fin. (195), promises Mizan
al-'Amal.

61. Cf. JRAS, 1952, 38-40, 45.

62. Bouyges, Chronologie, 29, n. 6. Al-Ghazali's
virtual rejection of The Criterion of
Action may explain the state of the text; if he did not authorize its
“publication” (by copying), the single manuscript may have come into the hands
of an unscrupulous person, who put it in its present form.

11. W. Ivanow, A Creed of the Fatimids, Bombay,
1936,47-50; for its soundness as an exposition of earlier views cf. p. vi.

12. In Al-Majalis al-Mustansiriyya (ed.
Muhammad Kamil Husayn, Cairo, n.d.), 29 f., the Qur'an and the imam are spoken
of as “equal partners” (garinan). (Cf.
Islamic Research Association Miscellany, 1.146.) This book, probably
composed about 1062, also speaks of the obligation to retain the rahir along with the basin (p.19, etc.)-a doctrine which
limits the control of ideation by the imam, but which was rejected by the Assassins
and other revolutionaries. Such a doctrine was more appropriate for men charged
(like the Fatimids) with the responsibility of keeping order in a mixed
community. For the more conservative outlook of the Fatimids cf. B. Lewis, Origins, 85 f., and H. F. Hamdani in

21. Ibn-al-Athir, sub anno 456; cf. E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, ii. 171-4.
The exact strength of the Hanbalites is difficult to estimate. Al-Ghazali (ID, i. z5-book ,, ch. 2, ad fin.) says
they are fewer in number than Shafi’ites, Hanafites and Malikites. If this
judgement is correct, either the impression given by the Hanbalite sources
exaggerates their importance, or they were more important in Baghdad than
elsewhere.

30. K. ar-Ri’aya, ed. Margaret Smith, London, 1940, 84-133 Qut al-Qulub, Cairo, 1932/1357, ii. 8-17 (§
31). Nizam-al-Mulk, Book of Government, 78-90,
has stories of leading judges who were dishonest; even if not true these
stories show the low reputation of the class.

31. ID, i. 2
f.; SM, i. 57-9.

32. ID, i. S3; SM. i. 358 quotes a similar saying from the Hilya of Abu-Nu'aym, and a report that
Sufyan ibn-! Uyayna attributed a saying about salt to 'Isa.

40- Iqtisad, 6-8,
second tamhid; cf. Arba'in, 23-5. The point here made is
also made by Jabre, Certitude, 171,
and by C. A. Nallino, Oriente Moderno, xv
(1935), 59. Cf. also p. 148 below.

41. Irshad, see Bibliography.

42. Al-'Agida an-Nil dmiyya, Cairo,
1948/1367. There is a not altogether satisfactory German translation by H.
Klopfer, Cairo (1958)

43. For the date
of Abu-Bakr ibn-al-'Arabi's first visit to Baghdad cf. Ibn-al-'Imad, Shadharat adh-Dhahab, iv. 141 f. It is
less likely that al-Ghazali lectured on this work on Abu-Bakr's second visit in
May/June 1097 (cf. Abu-Bakr's statement in 'Awasim
al-Qawasim, quoted by Jabre, “Biographie”, 87-but the date is not “February”).
For the use of texts in lecturing cf. Mez, Renaissance
of lslam,179 f.; also A. S. Tritton, Materials
on Muslim Education in the Middle Ages, London, 1957..

48. An interesting
philosophical argument is the second argument for the visibility of God, Iqtisad, 32-4 (cf. 'Aqida Nilamiyya, 28, not understood by
Klopfer). The close parallelism to Ma'raj
al-Quds (Cairo, 1927/1346), 18o-2, raises problems, since the Ma'am is Neoplatonic and cannot be
authentic unless like the Maqasid it
is an objective statement of the philosophers' views.

VI

1. Faith and Practice, 57 (128)

2. The fullest
treatment of the early sufi movement is in Louis Massignon's Essai (see Bibliography), chs. 4 and 5.
A reliable short work in English is Sufism:
an Account of the Mystics of Islam, by A. J. Arberry, London, 1950.

3. Essai, 153-6.

4. The main point
here is made, for example, in Mystical
Elements in Mohammed, by John Clark Archer (New Haven, 1924), a book which,
though now out-dated in part, has some useful suggestions.

12. It must be
admitted, however, that the break between mysticism and worldliness was far
from complete; Ibn-Abi-Dunya (d. 894), reckoned a Sufi, was also tutor to the
heir to the caliphate (Massignon, Essai,
232, 240).

46. The
non-Arabist, or the Arabist in a hurry, may obtain a good idea of the scope of
the work from G. H. Bousquet's French “analysis” (see Bibliography under Vivification). Some of the more
elementary parts are expounded briefly in The
Beginning of Guidance, in Faith and
Practice, 86-152.

VII

1. Cf. Integration, chs. 2 and 3

2. Cf. p. 81f. above.

3. Cf. p.102 above.

4. Faith and Practice, 6z (i3 S); cf. Mishkdt,
33 (74),39 (8i) fl. The choice of term is probably due to Greek influence;
cf. Averroes' Tahafut al- Tahafut, tr.
S. Van den Berg, London,1954, ii, i i foot. Since stating in JRAS,1952, 27, that this technical use of
dhawq was not found in the ID (Ihya'), I have discovered or had
pointed out to me several instances. But I am still of the opinion that in
certain parts of the ID (which are
therefore perhaps “early”) al-Ghazali had not adopted the conception; cf.
“Study”, 126.

5. ID, iv.
354; cf. JRAS, 1952, 27.

6. Arba'in, 57; cf. 23. The relation of the last ten sections of this work to the
books of the Revival is: 31; 33; 34;
32a; 32b; 37; 35b; 36a; 36b; 40. Thus books 35a, 38, 39 are omitted.

5. Aspirations for a restoration
of a caliphate (with power) adhering to the principles of the Shari a are
probably behind al-Mawardi's (d. 1058) Institutions
of Government (Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyya); cf H. A. R. Gibb in Islamic Culture, xi
(1937),291-302.

To al-Ghazali is ascribed,
probably correctly, a work on government in the Persian tradition (and in
Persian), Nasihat al-Muluk; cf. Fr.
Meier in ZDMG. 93 (1939), 395-408.
This suggests he had abandoned the attempt to assert the Shari a in the conduct
of government. (An English translation by F. R. C. Bagley is in course of
publication.)

2. Subk. iii. 35
f. Such chronological indications as are gained from the notice suggest that
grand-uncle is more likely; but D. B. Macdonald's support for this matter
(“Life”, 74 n. 2) is based on an inferior text.

Faith and Practice
= The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazali, London, 19S3; translations
of the Munqidh and Biddyat cl-Hidaya by W. Montgomery Watt;
a number in brackets gives the page of the Arabic text used.